


Books That Did and Didn't Burn

by hollycomb



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In high school, Stan's mother thinks his old friend Kyle will be a good influence. Kyle doubts it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written shortly after the You're Getting Old/Ass Burgers episodes.

Everybody must remember when Stan sort of went crazy, but sometimes Kyle feels like he's the only one, because no one ever talks about it. Stan might talk about it, but he probably doesn't, and Kyle wouldn't know. Stan only talks to Craig and Kenny and the other kids who get high in the woods after school. If Kyle accidentally meets Stan's eyes in the hallway, he'll flush and feel like he should apologize, though by then Stan will have already looked away, pretending not to notice as Kyle walks past. 

Or maybe he really doesn't notice. Kyle has been invisible since freshman year. Even Cartman ignores him, having moved on to obsessing over people with tits now that his balls have dropped. Kenny sometimes throws Kyle a bone, for old time's sake, but Kyle can see him struggling not to mention Stan's name, and Kyle would rather just avoid Kenny if it means they have to act like Stan never existed. Kyle's only real friend is his younger brother. Kyle suspects Ike sometimes gets high with Kenny and those guys, but he doesn't mention Stan, either. 

Wendy is Kyle's academic rival, and they pretend to be friends while they're competing for leadership positions in their many afterschool clubs. If popularity factors in, and it usually does, Wendy always wins. Kyle is proud to be head chair on their academic bowl team, which was not an elected position. He secretly thinks he's much smarter than Wendy and that she just works hard, and he knows she thinks the same thing about him. 

She's the one who tells Kyle about Stan getting arrested. 

“Kenny, too,” she says as Kyle stands listening to the details, his back pressed to the freezing brick wall of the main school building. They're in the skinny alleyway between the school and the gym, where Kyle eats his lunch even when it's forty below, because it's better than sitting by himself in the cafeteria or eating in a bathroom stall. It's not like it's a secret that he's a loser with no friends, but he likes to pretend that he can hide that fact. 

“Was it more than an ounce?” Kyle asks, running over what little he knows about possession laws for minors. 

“How should I know?” Wendy asks. She does her hair-flip thing. “They're so stupid. Everyone knew they smoked back there. It was like they wanted to get caught.” 

“Craig, too?”

“Are you kidding? No. He ran.”

Kyle nods. Craig is on the track team. Kyle wanted to try out, freshman year, just so he could do some sort of athletic activity that didn't require hand-eye coordination, but his asthma prohibited it. 

“Anyway,” Wendy says. “I thought you should know.”

“Why?”

“Because – I don't know. We both used to care about him.” 

Kyle nods. Of course he doesn't care about Stan Marsh anymore. Not actively, anyway. He's allowed to be nostalgic about the Stan he used to know, though. Before Stan decided Kenny was right about everything and started putting anything Kenny could get his hands on up his nose. 

Kyle tried getting drunk once, on a forgotten bottle of almond liqueur he found in the back of the pantry. He ended up crying with his head in Ike's lap, and his stomach didn't feel right for three days.

“Well,” Kyle says, when Wendy stands there staring at him. “I hope he'll get a fair trial.”

Wendy rolls her eyes like she knew he would say that and waves, leaving him alone in the courtyard. Kyle listens to the _clack-clack_ of her heeled boots until she's gone. 

Stan is back in school the following week, but he's there in name only, as usual. He sleeps through class until the teachers bark at him loudly enough to wake him, shows up late and plays with his phone whenever he can get away with it. He only has one class with Kyle: Honors English. How Stan managed to get into the Honors track for this one subject, Kyle has no idea. Stan turns in homework only when it's absolutely necessary and doesn't participate in class discussions. Kyle suspects their teacher, Ms. Doyle, wants to fuck Stan or something. He's got that doomed, Byronic thing going on, and he probably turns in erotic poetry in place of term papers, just to keep her fooled.

"I heard you guys got arrested," Kyle says when he sees Kenny later that day, not in school but hanging out behind the soccer field, an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip. He looks like he just woke up, but that's nothing new. 

"Yeah, but it's no big deal," Kenny says, the cigarette wagging when he talks. "It was my second strike, so."

"So the next one is your third."

"Right." Kenny grins. "What are you doing back here? You got a light?"

"You know I don't have a fucking light. I'm walking home from school. I saw orange over here and figured it was you."

Kenny looks down at himself as if just now realizing what color his parka is. Now that he's sixteen he's mostly grown into it. 

"Well, don't worry," Kenny says when he looks up again. "Craig didn't get picked up."

Kyle scoffs. "Like I give a shit about Craig."

"Oh, that's right." Kenny closes his eyes and puts his palm against his forehead in a gesture of mock self reproach. "You don't care about _Craig_. You barely even remember who _Craig_ is. You just came over here because you care so very deeply about my well-being. Thank you, Kyle."

"What the hell is your problem?" Kyle pretends not to understand that Kenny is talking about Stan, but Kenny has known him for a long time and pretending doesn't go far with him.

"I got no problems, man," Kenny says. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and tucks it behind his ear, strands of greasy blond hair falling over it. "None at all." 

"Yeah, that's good," Kyle says, getting agitated. "'Cause you're high all the time, right? So who gives a fuck? That's a solution, that's awesome."

"Hey," Kenny says, and he points his finger at Kyle, his face growing serious. "You keep on believing there's a solution, Broflovski. Believe that for all of us, forever."

Kyle isn't sure if Kenny is being sincere or making fun of him, but his eyes are stinging as he walks away. Fuck Kenny and Stan and however many strikes they have. Roughly eight billion by Kyle's count. He's surprised they're both still alive.

The week before Thanksgiving, Kyle is doing homework at the kitchen table when his mother comes in. She's humming the way she always does when she's got something unpleasant that she feels guilty about laying on him, and if his mother feels guilty about asking him to do something, it's usually really bad. 

"What?" Kyle asks when she hovers, pretending to brush dirt from the top of his ushanka. People make fun of him for continuing to wear it, but he needs something to stay the same as it used to be, and it feels like the only thing he can actually control: his hat. 

"I was just on the phone with Tara from the congregation," Sheila says, toying with the curls that have escaped from the back of Kyle's hat. Kyle raises his shoulders and moans, wincing. 

"Don't mess with my hair," he says. "What does Tara have to do with me?" She's talking about Mrs. Verner, a busybody middle-aged lady who his mother likes gossip with before and after services.

"Oh, nothing, bubbeh! I was just bragging to her about what a kind and charitable son I have. _Her_ son is a real piece of work. No spirit of generosity, wants everything for himself, gimme, gimme, gimme! That poor woman. I'm just glad we raised you not to be that way."

"What do you want?" Kyle asks, his teeth gritted.

"Kyle, don't be so cynical!" She gives him a light whack on the back of the head. "It's just a small favor to Mrs. Marsh. You'll probably enjoy it!"

"Mrs. Marsh?" Kyle turns from his math book. "What's she want with me?"

"It's just - speaking of no good sons, you know what's become of her Stanley. Oi! To think that the two of you were such good friends as boys! Thank goodness you didn't follow him and the McCormick boy down that - path."

"What does she want me to do, stage an intervention?" Kyle laughs. "Me and Wendy tried that in eighth grade. It was pretty much the last time Stan talked to us." 

"Nothing that dramatic, she just wants you to spend an afternoon with him. She thinks you'd be a good influence, and I agree! He got arrested recently, you know. It's only a matter of time before he ends up in real prison!"

"Maybe that'd be the best thing for him."

"Kyle! Have some sympathy!"

Kyle turns back to this book, his fists curling up so tightly that he nearly snaps his mechanical pencil in two. Someone asking him to have sympathy for Stan. That's rich. Stan was never interested in Kyle's sympathy. It was always irrelevant to him. 

"Anyway, she's keeping a very close watch on Stan since his arrest, and I told her she could bring him over here for dinner."

"Mom! _What_? Tonight?"

"Yes, tonight! Don't act so put out. It's not as if you had other plans." 

Kyle growls in frustration and slams his book shut, not appreciating the reminder that he spends every night here, with his homework, stupidly excited if Ike makes room in his busy social calendar to watch a movie with him.

"Where are you going?" his mother asks as he hurries out of the kitchen.

"Up to my room," Kyle says. "Why don't you try entertaining Stan when he gets here? He's a really fascinating conversationalist these days."

"Kyle!" 

He ignores her and slams the door of his bedroom. He would almost welcome having Stan here, just to show his mother what a lost cause he is so that this topic can forever be closed, but it's mortifying, their mothers arranging a play date for them. He drops face first onto his bed and lies there on his stomach until he hears a car out in the driveway. He hopes it's just his father or one of Ike's alarmingly older friends, but he hears the high, hopeful tone of Mrs. Marsh, and then an low mumbling voice that must be Stan's. Kyle can't remember the last time he heard Stan speak.

Kyle waits, his heart pounding. He can't look like he's just moping around when Stan comes up here, so he grabs his laptop and sits up in bed, pretending to study the _Denver Post_ 's website intently. He hears his mother greeting Stan downstairs, a brief and indecipherable exchange of conversation, and then there they are, coming up the stairs: Stan's footsteps, plodding and slow, as if he's dreading this, too.

Even Stan's knock is lethargic. Kyle groans loudly enough for Stan to hear and wipes his sweating palms on his comforter.

"What?" he says. 

Stan responds by entering. Kyle huffs, because he might have been naked, for all Stan cares. They stare at each other for awhile, Kyle glowering from the bed and Stan expressionless in the doorway, his shoulders slumped tiredly. 

"Hey," Stan says. 

"Hey." 

"Can I come in?"

"You're already in, for all intents and purposes."

Stan seems to take that as a yes. He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, then stands there like an idiot with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the walls of Kyle's room. 

"Kinda looks the same," Stan says. He sounds stoned. Kyle wouldn't put it past him to get high to celebrate his release from prison.

"I heard you got arrested," Kyle says, letting his voice stay sharp. Stan smiles a little, but it's not his old smile, the one that meant something. 

"Yeah," he says. "Two hundred motherfucking hours of community service. Plus probation, and my parents have to pay a fine. Why the fuck isn't pot legal? You know?"

"It's not one of my biggest concerns," Kyle says, and Stan laughs. "What?" Kyle barks. 

"Nothing, dude," Stan says. He's got that infuriating pothead grin on as he wanders over to Kyle's bulletin board to look at the reminders he's tacked to it. "You're such a dork."

"I am? Oh, Jesus, thanks for telling me. I'll have to do something about that. Quick, give me a beer and a joint! That'll make me cool right away, I'm sure."

Stan laughs, flicking at a curled up corner on a flyer for a bake sale Wendy organized to raise money for debate team jackets.

"What, like," Stan says, still playing with the paper, still smiling for no good reason. "You think I'm, like. Cool?"

"No. That was the joke. You used to know what sarcasm was. I hope those brain cells died a beautiful death."

This finally wipes Stan's smile from his face, though he still seems vaguely amused. He puts both hands in his pockets and walks over to the end of Kyle's bed, blowing out his breath like a guy who's had a long day. He's got the usual bags under his eyes and the pallid skin of a basement-dweller. He never really had breakouts, the son of a bitch. Kyle's face was a minefield in junior high. It's cleared up now, due to chemical intervention. Stan is taller than Kyle, despite his regular substance abuse, and he looks huge at the foot of Kyle's bed, probably because he hasn't stood there since he was eleven years old. 

"My mom thinks you can save me," Stan says. 

"I can't," Kyle says, scoffing at the notion. 

"I know," Stan says. "You used to want to. Remember?"

"Barely," Kyle says, mumbling. He stares down at his laptop screen. Outside, it's already gotten dark, and there's a lazy snowfall. When they were kids, Stan would say, _Look, it's like God's got dandruff_.

"You know I was, like, in love with you, right?" Stan asks. "When we were kids?" Kyle looks up from the computer, ready to defend himself against that accusation, only Stan isn't accusing Kyle of anything, and he doesn't seem to be joking. 

"You're full of shit," Kyle says. "Or high. Both, probably."

"No, it's true." Stan frowns a little and sits down at the end of the bed, near Kyle's socked feet. "I mean, I didn't really know it. But I thought maybe you did. Like, you would have figured that out before I did."

"Right, okay." Kyle stares at the laptop screen, at the news, trying to focus on the words _Guns Okay in Church - Sometimes_. "Did Kenny tell you to say that? Is he in on this? You guys are gonna laugh really hard about this later, right, 'cause everything's a big joke -"

"I shouldn't have said that, forget it," Stan says, waving his hand through the air. For a moment Kyle thinks Stan will touch his sock, which is something Stan used to do when Kyle's knees were hugged to his chest, his feet curled around the edge of the sofa cushion while they watched a movie. If Stan got bored with the movie, he'd poke at Kyle's feet, tracing the argyle patterns on his socks. 

"How'd you get arm muscles?" Kyle mutters jealously after they've been quiet for awhile, Stan staring straight ahead at nothing and Kyle sneaking looks at him. Stan looks down at his arms. He's wearing a t-shirt, of course, despite the fact that it's November and snowing outside. Stan Marsh feels no pain, not even the weather-induced kind. 

"Me and Kenny found this weight bench at the dump," he says. He looks up from his arms and meets Kyle's eyes. His gaze makes the air too heavy, unbreathable, and Kyle has to look away. 

"You're dumpster diving with Kenny now?" Kyle says. 

"Sometimes. Anyway, we work out. He wants to get girls, so."

"Do you guys blow each other, too?" Kyle asks, the question making his eyes water, the glow from the laptop screen stinging against them. "When the girls don't show?"

"Yeah, Kyle, we totally blow each other," Stan says flatly. "It's awesome. Kenny gives great head."

"That's cool. Good for you." 

"You want me to go?" Stan says, and then he laughs. He's picking at the nail bed on his thumb when Kyle looks up again. "Stupid question," Stan says, muttering. "I know this wasn't your idea."

"Are you, like, feeling sorry for yourself?" Kyle says, his eyes narrowing, and still burning a little. "For a change? 'Cause none of what happened was your fault, right? Pot should be legal, class should be more interesting, I should have let you treat me like shit -"

"I never treated you like shit," Stan says, pointing at him. "Never. Not the way -" He scoffs and shakes his head, looking away.

"Not the way what?" Kyle asks, though he's pretty sure he knows what Stan is going to say. 

"Not the way Cartman did. But Cartman, hey, he could do no wrong, right? No amount of forgiveness is too much for the great Eric Cartman-"

"Oh - what - seriously? You were jealous of _Cartman_? They're called low expectations, Stan. The lowest, in his case. If he wasn't actively trying to fart in my face, I was impressed."

"So that's all you require in a best friend, at the end of the day. No face farts."

"Who else did I have?" Kyle asks, and only when he feels the silence in the room regrowing like mold does he realize that he was shouting just then. There's a new stillness downstairs, as if his mother is trying to eavesdrop from the first floor.

"Well," Stan says, picking at his thumb again. "You had me. Sort of."

"No, I didn't. Not even sort of. Not even a little. Not anymore." 

They're quiet for awhile, and Kyle is surprised that Stan isn't storming out. He's more surprised that he doesn't want him to. He scrolls the main _Denver Post_ page up and down, pretending to read it. Stan bites at a cuticle.

"That's disgusting," Kyle says, muttering. 

"What?" Stan says, looking up, clueless, and for a moment he looks like he did when they were kids, when Kyle would tell him it was gross to put the knife he used in the jelly into the peanut butter jar. Kyle smiles, and it happens without his permission, but he can't get rid of it. 

"Nothing," Kyle says. He slides one foot forward until it's touching Stan's thigh and gives him a push, jostling him. "You. You're, like. You look like you're covered with this greasy film. These days."

"Some days I am," Stan says thoughtfully. "But not all days."

Kyle laughs, and it hurts and feels good at the same time, his eyes blurring over when he looks back down at the computer screen. Stan puts his hand over Kyle's foot, holding it against his thigh.

"Why do you have to be like this?" Kyle asks. "Why can't you just be-"

"Like you? Don't you think I wish I could be? Every fucking day?"

"You don't even try!" Kyle is crying for real now; fuck. He looks up from the computer, showing Stan his face as tears streak down over his cheeks. "You never tried. I only ever asked you to try."

"You didn't understand what you were asking," Stan says. His voice is tight, and so are his fingers, curling around Kyle's foot. "I couldn't even hear you half the time." 

"You didn't want to!"

"Yes, I did! Kyle, goddammit, I just told you I loved you. Did you hear that? Do you know what that means? You were the one thing I still loved."

"Oh, whatever," Kyle says, shaking his head and hiccuping a sob. "You hated me more than anything. I let you down, right? You wanted me to know that I let you down most of all." 

"No, Kyle-" Stan's eyes are wet as he crawls across the bed and shoves Kyle's laptop aside. Kyle should hit him or lean away, but he's worn thin and he's needed this for too long, Stan's arms sliding around him, Stan sniffling against his shoulder while he holds him. Kyle puts his arms around Stan's back and buries his face in Stan's hair, trying to keep his crying quiet while his chest bounces with sobs, not wanting his mother to come to the door and interfere. 

"Shit, shit," Stan whispers, sniffling. He's getting snot on Kyle's neck, and Kyle feels stupidly grateful for it, just like he always has with whatever slimy residue of Stan's life that he could get. He shifts until he's basically in Stan's lap, his leg thrown across Stan's thighs. Stan is rubbing his back, and Kyle is swallowing down the urge to whimper like a child, holding on tight. 

They sit like that for a long time, until Kyle almost feels like he could fall asleep, the tension draining from his body as Stan continues to rub his back. He can feel Stan's heart beating fast against his own chest, and he can't believe how warm Stan is. He'd been afraid for years that Stan's skin would be cold to the touch, like a thing that had died. 

"You smell the same," Kyle says, mumbling this sleepily. Stan laughs and maybe kisses his hat; Kyle can't say for sure. 

"So do you," Stan says. "So does this room." 

Kyle sits back, and Stan's arms slide down to circle his waist. He feels like maybe Stan won't let him go, like he might actually fight for Kyle for the first time in six years. That used to be such a given, that Stan would fight whole armies for him. But Stan looks tired now, as if this has taken the last of whatever energy he'd been holding on to. 

"Why are you in Honors English?" Kyle asks. Stan blinks a few times, then laughs. 

"That's what you're asking me now?" he says. Kyle nods and puts his hand on Stan's chest so he can feel his heart again. It's still beating hard.

"Um, 'cause reading is the only thing I really like?" Stan says. 

"What do you read?" Kyle asks. "I mean, for fun." He's envisioning relentlessly depressing French novels where everyone but the villain ends up dead.

"Graphic novels, mostly," Stan says. Kyle grins.

"And I'm the dork." 

"That's what I was trying to tell you." Stan tugs him closer, and suddenly he has this look on his face like they're going to kiss, which makes the breath in Kyle's lungs freeze solid. "I'm a dork, too," Stan says. "And a burned out loser, so I don't even get the academic benefits."

"You're not a loser," Kyle says. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, watching Stan's gaze sink down to his lips. "At least you have friends."

"I do?" Stan looks genuinely curious. 

"Kenny and Craig and those guys."

Stan snorts. "Kenny is my dealer, Craig is the worst person I've ever met in my life, and 'those guys' don't even count."

"I hate Kenny for doing this to you," Kyle says, his hand curling into a fist over Stan's heart. Stan shakes his head.

"Kenny didn't do anything," he says. 

"He gives you drugs!"

"I'd get them from someone else if not him."

"What - so - you're not going to quit?"

Stan shrugs. "I don't want to," he says. Kyle sputters in disbelief, shoving him away.

"Why not?" he asks. "What's wrong with you?"

"I don't know," Stan says. He scoots away until Kyle's leg isn't draped across his lap anymore. "But it's not going to go away."

Kyle groans in frustration, turning to punch his pillow. Stan says it's not a matter of trying or not, but Kyle has never seen him try. He keeps his back to Stan, seething, and flinches when Stan touches his shoulder.

"I used to hate it that you didn't understand this," Stan says. "And now I'm so glad, Kyle. I'm glad you don't get it." 

"You think I'm such a baby," Kyle says. He sinks down to hide his face in his pillow, curling his knees in toward his chest. 

"I don't think you're a baby," Stan says. His hand skims down over Kyle's side and comes to rest on his hip. Kyle shivers, his toes curling inside his socks. "Can I spoon you?" Stan asks, and Kyle laughs hard into his pillow. He peeks at Stan with one eye, thinking he must be laughing, too, or at least smiling hard. Stan looks like he just got punched. 

"C'mere," Kyle says, grabbing Stan's arm when he tries to move away. "Spoon me, yeah. I'm cold."

Stan seems to move in slow motion as he settles in behind Kyle, maybe because Kyle is impatient to have Stan all around him again. Kyle is holding his breath, and he doesn't let it out until Stan's arm slides across his chest, his knees pushing in behind Kyle's. Stan pulls him close, until Kyle can feel Stan's nervous breath fluttering low in his stomach, pressed against the small of Kyle's back. They're both tense for a moment, twitching into comfortable positions, and then Stan gets soft and heavy at the same time, his face resting against Kyle's neck. His breathing is slow and deliberate, despite his pounding heart, as if he doesn't want to disturb Kyle with the force of it. Kyle puts his hand over Stan's and wiggles back against him a bit, until he feels Stan's breath pause for a moment before resuming.

"That's nice," Kyle says, idiotically. He's melting inside his clothes, flushed with embarrassed pleasure. Stan feels really, really good. Like home.

"Yeah," Stan says. His voice is pinched, but he doesn't sound like he'll get emotional again, just like he's trying to hold something else back. He sighs, and it moves across Kyle's skin like wind over water, making him shiver.

"I feel like I still know you," Kyle says. He pushes his fingers in between Stan's, rubbing his thumb over Stan's bitten cuticle. "Like there's nothing I don't know about you." 

"You know everything that matters," Stan says. "It's like there were these brittle, old, handwritten accounts of who I was, and most of them got burned up in a big fire. But I gave one of them to you, the most important one, and I worry sometimes that you got rid of it, but you have it, Kyle, I can feel it, you still have it." 

Stan cries again, quietly, curling up tight around Kyle. Kyle could cry, too, and he will later, when he thinks about that more, but for now he just brings Stan's hand up to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, his uneven nail beds, the tips of his fingers and the webs between them. Everything he can reach.

Kyle knows the way this works. Eventually, the world resets. But tonight, it feels like all Stan needed was an hour of spooning Kyle and a big Broflovski family meal. Kyle's mom cooks all of Stan's old favorites: noodle pudding and roast beef, carrots with honey, even _hamantaschen_ stuffed with figs. Kyle had no idea she'd prepared anything so elaborate. Candles are lit, prayers are said. Ike shows up sober and hugs Stan before taking a seat. Gerald gives Stan advice about how to get the possession arrest stricken from his record.

"Pot should be legal," Ike says. "The criminalization of marijuana has done way more harm to this country than good."

The family gets into a mild debate over this, everyone passing dishes and pretending this is Stan's problem: just a little afterschool pot smoking, nothing that solid legal advice and a healthy attitude about recreational drug use can't solve. Kyle appreciates the charade, and wonders if Stan is chewing on the insides of his cheeks, wishing he had a beer. Kyle touches his foot to Stan's under the table, and Stan looks away from Ike, who is ranting about Canada's superior handling of this miracle drug. Kyle smiles, and Stan smiles back. It seems real. Kyle consults the book Stan trusted him with all those years ago, carefully turning its dusty pages, trying to translate the look in Stan's eyes. Kyle is a little rusty with this particular language, not exactly fluent anymore, but he thinks it might be hope. It's small and fragile like hope, a tiny little flame, though it could be the dangerous sort of flame that turns into a raging fire. If that happens, Stan will survive, because Kyle has the last sacred book of him, deep down and safe, and he knows that now. He can feel it, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Kyle's Saturday nights have become exciting again. He's courting this friend of his, Nick, and they finally made out last weekend, at a mutual friend's party. This weekend, Nick has agreed to let Kyle make him dinner, and they're going to watch movies and drink wine. It's an actual, proper date, with the potential to end in actual, grown-up sex, and maybe even a morning after with cuddling, the newspaper, coffee, an omelet, that sort of thing. Kyle has all the supplies, just in case. He even bought orange juice with pulp, because that's what Nick orders when they go to breakfast together before an all-day study session. They're both taking the bar exam this summer. They both have their shit together, and Kyle shouldn't feel so amazed that Nick is actually interested in him, but he is, and he's humming to himself in the kitchen as he gets dinner ready, sipping wine and chopping basil.

"Sorry I'm early," Nick says when he arrives, presenting Kyle with a bottle of 2009 Burgundy that probably wasn't cheap. They kiss each other's cheeks, and Kyle can't decide if it's awkward or not. He decides no, it's not: it's sophisticated. He's determined to be positive and optimistic about every fucking facet of this whole experience. He's twenty-six years old and he's never had a serious boyfriend, but this feels different.

"It's okay," Kyle says, leading him into the kitchen. "You can help me cook. I'm making chicken parmesan, is that alright? I know it's boring-"

"It's fine, Kyle," Nick says, grinning. "Chicken sounds good." He helps himself to the bottle of wine that Kyle had already opened. It's much less impressive, a cheap Savignon Blanc. Kyle drinks more and gets back to work on the salad, telling himself to calm down. 

"I figured we could watch that movie you talked about," Kyle says. "Later, I mean, after dinner. If you want." 

"Which movie?"

"Um, the one about the Japanese guy who's dying? It sounded really good."

"Oh, sure, yeah. Kind of depressing, though."

"We could watch something else, I've got that On Demand thing -"

"No, I mean, it's fine, it's good." Nick grins and steals a slice of mozzarella from Kyle's cutting board. "Whatever you want." 

Kyle wishes Nick would touch him, or have more opinions about things, but it's fine, it's good, he's not going to psych himself out. Nick is probably nervous, too. They're about the same in terms of relative attractiveness, and as soon as Kyle found out Nick was gay he had him on his radar as possibly gettable. He was still surprised when Nick kissed him at that party; they'd both been drinking, and Kyle can't remember the details of the kiss, just that he was glad that it happened and disappointed when things didn't go further. 

Nick doesn't help him cook so much as refill his wine glass and snack on the cheese, but Kyle doesn't mind. It's nice just to have the company, and they talk about the usual things: law school, their professors, the bar exam, and the grim job prospects for young attorneys. Kyle is doing his internship at a firm that specializes in intellectual property law, but they haven't been able to promise him anything for the summer, let alone the long term. 

"We'll survive," Kyle says to Nick as they're settling on the couch after dinner, wine glasses in hand. "Even if we end up working at bookstores." 

"Bookstores don't really exist anymore," Nick says. 

"True. Shit, so, Taco Bell?" 

"Probably." Nick grins, and it's a temporary but effective tonic for Kyle's anxiety about the future: he's not alone. As they start up the movie he allows himself to imagine sharing this apartment with Nick, pooling whatever meager salaries they're able to make and commiserating about work before having easy, comfortable sex and going to bed at a reasonable hour. Like real adults. He'd feel more hopeful about the prospect of any of that actually happening if Nick would at least put an arm around him. They're sitting close, but Kyle is impatient and starved for cuddling. He got too accustomed, once, to having it on a regular basis, and he never really got over his craving for a sturdy chest to lean against and the sound of someone else's heart beating just under his ear.

They're only about ten minutes into the movie when someone knocks on the door of Kyle's apartment. Kyle groans and puts his wine glass on the coffee table. 

"It's these college kids trying to sell newspaper subscriptions," Kyle says. "I get one or two a week. It's so depressing." 

"Yeah, newspapers are deader than bookstores," Nick says. "Want me to pause it?"

"That's okay, it'll only take a second." 

Kyle opens the door, his mouth already open around the beginning of a polite rejection. Unfortunately, the guy who is standing in the hallway is the one person who, while very deserving of one, has never been successfully rejected by Kyle, politely or otherwise. 

"Hey, do you have some ice?" Stan says, leaning in the doorway and swaying a little. He's holding a balled-up flannel shirt against his left cheek, which appears to be bleeding profusely.

"Jesus, what happened to you?" Kyle asks, stepping out of the way so that Stan can stumble inside. Kyle catches his arm and steadies him. He looks awful and smells worse, which is no different than any of the other times he's suddenly reappeared in Kyle's life, but he's usually not bleeding.

"Whoa," Nick says when he sees Stan, hopping up from the couch. "Do you need me to call an ambulance?"

"No, no," Stan says, bracing his hand on Kyle's dining room table, which still has the plates from dinner scattered across it. "It's just a surface cut. I just need some ice. And maybe, um, to throw up. I think."

"Christ, then let me get you to the - bathroom," Kyle says, his teeth gritting as Stan proceeds to puke where he's half-standing, onto the carpet near the table. 

"Shit, fuck, sorry," Stan says, sinking down onto his knees. He winces and tucks his head to his chest. "I'm just really dizzy."

"What happened to you?" Kyle asks, floundering between worry and furious anger. He glances up at Nick and shakes his head. "This is my friend," he says, though that word is inadequate and maybe even inaccurate. "Sort of."

"Are you sure you don't want me to call 911?" Nick asks. He looks panicked and queasy, and Kyle is fairly sure their date is over. 

"Nuh, I'm fine," Stan says. "I just need to lie down. Or drink some water." 

"Come on," Kyle says with a groan, hoisting Stan up. "Into the bathroom, let me clean that up - God, you're a mess. You still haven't told me what happened to you."

"I sort of got hit by a car," Stan says. 

" _What_?" Kyle deposits him on the closed toilet lid, beginning to feel nauseous himself. Nick lingers in the doorway, looking lost. 

"It wasn't that bad, though," Stan says. He's holding his stomach like he might puke again, but it seems like his bleeding has stopped, the blood on the shirt crusted and dark. "I just need some ice."

"Stop saying you need ice! If I take this shirt away is the wound going to start gushing blood?"

"Um." Stan looks up at Kyle. "No?" He's frightened, needy, and drunk, a combination that makes Kyle want to cradle him and kill him simultaneously. It also makes him want to drop to his knees and weep, but he promised himself that he's cried his last tears over Stan Marsh, and he's not going to break that vow, not even at the fucker's funeral.

The wound is superficial, and it only bleeds a little when Kyle cleans it. He makes his apologies to Nick and tells him he's free to leave, that he'll call and explain later. Nick says he'll stay if Kyle needs him, but he's already backing toward the door, and Kyle lets him go. Stan throws up twice more after Nick has gone, once on Kyle's shirt and once into the toilet. 

"Fuck, I'm sorry," he moans, his head still dipped toward the bowl. He spits into it and rubs his hand across his eyes. "I should have let them take me to the hospital. I'm fine, though, I'm fine. I'm just not supposed to be drunk in public, like, legally." 

Kyle rolls his eyes and pulls off his ruined shirt before helping Stan up off the floor. He's been through this enough times to know when the barfing period is over. He strips Stan down to his boxers and puts him in his bed, brings him water and cleans his face with a cool washcloth. He hates that under the anger and sadness and impotency there's a sliver of relief, because Stan is here, and Kyle is going to take care of him now. In a few days, that sliver will fade to an eyelash and blow away, and Kyle will be resentful, exhausted, broken hearted. For now, maybe just because he's a little drunk himself, he clings to the tender things beneath all the rage, carefully smoothing the washcloth down over Stan's cheek. Stan just moans softly, his eyes closed. He's already mostly asleep.

"Where'd your friend go?" Stan asks, mumbling this into Kyle's pillow.

"How do you know he's not my boyfriend?" Kyle asks.

"'Cause I'm your boyfriend, dude."

Kyle laughs darkly. He's not sure what's more depressing, the fact that Stan seems to actually believe that or the fact that Kyle still kind of wishes it were true. 

"You don't have a concussion, do you?" Kyle asks, as if Stan would know. Kyle rubs the washcloth over his back, watching Stan's muscles move beneath his skin as he shifts against the mattress, making himself right at home. 

"Concussion? Nah." Stan gropes for him. "C'mere. Kyle? You still there? Come lay here with me."

"I have to do the dishes," Kyle says. He's tempted to just give in, but he's done this so many times over the past ten years, and he's got to guard himself against that day when Stan won't be in his bed anymore, because it's always going to come. He pulls the sheet up over Stan's bare skin and leaves the light on in the bedroom, because Stan might wake up and not know where he is.

Who is he kidding; Stan will definitely wake up and not know where he is, but then he'll find Kyle asleep beside him, and in the middle of the night, Kyle won't push him away. 

*

In the morning, Stan is silent and miserable-looking, and he accepts Advil when Kyle gives it to him. Kyle can't stand the three-day-old smell of him any longer, so he puts him in a bubble bath like the child he deserves to be treated as and goes to make breakfast. He knows Stan won't want food yet, so he just uses the last of the mozzarella to make a grilled cheese for himself. Only then does he realize he forgot to call Nick. 

"Hey, I'm sorry about last night," he says when he gets Nick's voice mail. "That was dramatic, ha, but it's really no big deal. This guy - he's like my brother, sort of, um, my very dysfunctional brother. So, I'm sorry, again. Anyway, call me, and, um, we'll reschedule, yeah? Okay. Bye."

In the bathroom, Stan is still soaking in the tub, bubbles laced across his skin and a washcloth draped over his eyes. He peeks from beneath it when he hears Kyle walk in.

"Are you the one who put this bandage on me?" Stan asks.

"Yes," Kyle says. He sits on the toilet lid. "Do you remember getting hit by a car?"

"It was more like I jumped out of the way and fell," Stan says. "I think."

"Who were you out getting wasted with?" Kyle asks, muttering, hoping that he wasn't alone. 

"I don't know, some of the guys from work," Stan says. 

"Jamba Juice employees go drinking after work?"

"Jamba - oh, no, I haven't worked there in, like. Six months? No, I've got this ditch digging thing now. Literally, I dig ditches. It's kinda cool, you get to be outside. Those guys can really drink, though, shit."

"I thought you looked kinda -" Kyle gestures to his own arms. "Bigger. And you've got a farmer's tan." 

"Did I barf on you?" Stan asks, narrowing his eyes. 

"Yeah," Kyle says. "And in front of my dinner guest. Who I guess you can't recall."

"Sorry, shit, Kyle. I'm really sorry. I didn't even mean to come here, I just. Did. Dinner guest?"

"This guy," Kyle says. Stan is giving him that pathetic look that only works in the first twenty-four hours of their reunions. "We're studying for the bar together." 

"I could help you with that," Stan says, smirking. 

"Yeah, that would be the Colorado Bar," Kyle says, though Stan knows this. "Not the kind with whiskey bottles lined up behind it." He slides off the toilet lid and sits on the floor beside the tub, letting Stan reach over and clasp his arm with a wet hand. Kyle used to rail at him, and sob, and ask him why he keeps doing this to himself, but it was wasted breath. Now he just looks at Stan as though he's inside a glass enclosure at the zoo, his behavior alien and unchangeable, fascinating and disgusting. The only time it feels like they're actually on the same planet is when Stan touches him. Kyle was a jerk to describe Stan to Nick as a kind of brother. Stan is the only guy Kyle has ever had inside him.

"So how've you been?" Stan asks, touching Kyle's face like he's checking to see if it's changed at all since they last saw each other. Seven months ago. Kyle woke up and Stan was gone.

"Busy," Kyle says. 

"I've missed you," Stan says, still stroking Kyle's cheek. He's beginning to feel human again and probably wants to fuck; Kyle wishes like hell that he didn't want that, too. "Thanks for not throwing me out in the gutter last night."

"Any sane person would have," Kyle says. 

"I'm gonna pay to have your carpet cleaned."

"How'd you know you got sick on the carpet?"

Stan shrugs. "It's a fair bet. I mean, I did, didn't I?"

"Yeah." Kyle puts his hands over his face and sighs into them. Stan is touching his hair now, his fingers pushing in through Kyle's curls. "Stop trying to seduce me," Kyle says. "It won't work. That guy. I'm kind of with him. I don't want to mess this up." 

"What guy?"

"The dinner guest! The one you don't remember."

"Oh." Stan lets his hand slide from Kyle's hair, the backs of his fingers skimming down along the side of Kyle's neck. "You know, I never get with anyone but you. You're the only person on earth who I'm attracted to."

"That's so stupid, Stan! You expect me to believe that?"

"Yeah, I do. Once you've had Kyle Brovlofski, everyone else looks like crap." 

"I guess I look like crap to you about seventy-five percent of the time, too."

"No, you don't. Why would you think that?"

"Because - Stan! God! Never mind. Get out of the tub. You're getting all pruny."

"As you wish," Stan says. He gets up, letting soap suds slide down over his naked body. He's ripped, from the ditch digging, from whatever. Stan floats through life without trying. Meanwhile, Kyle has switched to Diet Dr. Pepper and will probably end up a ditch digger despite attending law school and passing the bar. He hands Stan a towel. 

"I guess you don't want food," Kyle says. 

"Sure, I do," Stan says. "I wasn't that drunk." 

"Well, help yourself," Kyle says. "I'm not cooking for you."

"I would never presume to ask you to."

"Oh, shut up. How's your head?"

"Still attached to my body. So, I'm feeling good about that."

"God, I hate it when you're cheerful," Kyle says, though he actually doesn't. It's obnoxious, but preferable to the other side of Stan's manic personality. Stan throws the towel onto the sink when he's dry, and Kyle whines but doesn't otherwise resist when Stan gives him a naked hug from behind. 

"I seriously missed you," Stan says, his lips moving against Kyle's neck.

"Yeah? That's cool. You just forgot where I lived for seven months? And my phone number?"

"Kyle, what am I going to say to you on the phone? 'Hi, I'm still a piece of shit, want to hang out and pay for everything?' I always want to wait, you know, until I'm worthy of speaking to you. And then I just get drunk and get hit by cars." 

"So you did get hit by a car?" Kyle asks, wilting in Stan's grip. He just wants to be carried to bed, even if they only spoon like they did in high school when Stan needed to recharge. He makes himself think of Nick and wiggles out of Stan's arms. 

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," Stan says. "There was a car somewhere in the vicinity, anyway, and my head connected with pavement, and all I could think was, 'Kyle is the kind of guy who keeps ice on hand.'"

"That's what I am, yep," Kyle says as he walks out into the kitchen, his eyes watering. It doesn't count as crying. They're just unshed tears of fury. 

"Also, I wanted to crawl into your arms and die, but that was more Plan B." 

"What are you doing?" Kyle asks, turning from the fridge. "You're naked in my kitchen." 

"Sorry," Stan says, covering his dick, which is not completely soft, probably because he was just rubbing it against Kyle's ass ten seconds ago. 

"Go put some clothes on," Kyle says. "I'm sure I have some of the shit you left here last time lying around somewhere." He actually knows precisely where it is, and which articles of clothing still smell the most like Stan's skin, but he's not about to tell him that. Stan lived here for three months during the last stretch. A new record. They fought about the rent Stan wasn't paying and the job he didn't have, and Stan left.

When Stan returns to the kitchen, he's wearing some of Kyle's track pants and one of his white undershirts. The pants are too big and the shirt is too small, and this has the effect of making Stan look like he should be undressed again, which is what Kyle is trying hardest not to think about right now. He hands him the orange juice.

"Pulp?" Stan says, horrified. "Since when do you-"

"You don't know everything about me," Kyle says sharply. 

"I know you don't like _pulp_. You must be having breakfast with some asshole who does."

"No, I'm not, because you decided to crash my dinner party and bleed all over everything. Just give it back if you don't want to drink it." He reaches for the juice, but Stan holds it up out of his reach.

"I'll try it," Stan says. "If it's, like, the mark of sophistication or something." 

"You're so absurd," Kyle says, but that actually makes him laugh, and Stan's eyes light up like he's won a prize, a stark reminder of how blue they can be sometimes.

"Let's spend the whole day watching TV and eating bowls of cereal," Stan says. "And drinking this." He pops open the juice and drinks from the carton, wincing. "Ugh, God, it's like drinking oatmeal." 

"It is not," Kyle says, still laughing. He takes the carton and drinks some, trying and failing not to make a face that reveals his disgust. Stan grins. 

"See?" he says.

"Yeah, how could I forget that you're right about everything?" Kyle says. Unperturbed, Stan picks him up and carries him, squirming and laughing, to the living room couch. Kyle is pretty sure Stan will kiss him once they get there, but it still takes him by surprise, being pulled into Stan's lap and having his lips licked wide open by Stan's warm, pulp-flavored, gloriously familiar tongue. Kyle's sigh is partly self-admonishing, because he's swallowing it all up like Stan knew he would, the taste of Stan and how good he is at this, how well he knows what Kyle likes. He likes it when their chests press together, likes the way Stan's waist feels between his thighs, and the way Stan spreads his hands open on the small of Kyle's back, supporting him as they rub against each other. 

"You're not wearing underwear?" Kyle says when he reaches into the track pants to wrap his hand around Stan's cock. It's so hot, thick, perfect, the only one he's ever wanted to put his mouth on.

"What was I supposed to do, squeeze into yours?" Stan says. 

"I'm not that much smaller than you." 

"Your waist is."

"Not anymore," Kyle says. He's stroking Stan lazily, watching his eyes fog with pleasure. "I've got fat rolls now. Don't act like you haven't noticed."

"What the hell are you talking about? _This_?" Stan reaches up under Kyle's t-shirt to pinch the little roll of fat over the waistband of his boxers. Kyle whines and shifts away. 

"Yes, that. I can't get rid of it. Sit ups don't work." 

"Kyle, everybody has that when they're sitting up. So you're not ten pounds underweight anymore. That's good, man. You look fucking good." Stan growls a little as he says so, surging up to kiss him again. Kyle has been pursued by other guys and even a few girls, but nobody has ever made him feel the way Stan does, like he's the person in the room who everybody wants their hands on. Nobody has ever been as good at getting their hands on him, either. He thinks it goes back to when they were seven years old and a branch hit the window of Stan's bedroom during a storm. Kyle was spending the night, sleeping in his bed, and when he grabbed for Stan in fright Stan pulled him close and held him like anything coming for Kyle would have to get through him first. That kind of thing can't be recreated in adulthood, Kyle has found.

"You never gave me any breakfast," Stan says.

"Maybe 'cause you said you'd never presume to ask me to cook for you?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't," Stan says. "Let me suck your dick. I miss your come, Kyle, fuck. I want it all over me, down my fucking throat -"

"Jesus, yeah, okay, um." This might be a new record for Stan getting Kyle's pants off, but he's gone seven months without feeling anything but his own hand, and he's already shameless when it comes to Stan, so he might as well get laid, too. Stan settles between his legs and runs his fingers up and down Kyle's naked thighs, into his boxers. Kyle arches for him, taking off his shirt so Stan can see his imperfect chest, and Stan crawls up to lick Kyle's nipples until he's leaking into his shorts, moaning. 

Kyle shouldn't still be amazed at how good Stan is at this; they've done it so many times. The first time Stan sucked Kyle's dick was right before he left for college, like some kind of perverse forget me not. He was in Kyle's dorm room three days later, on his knees again. Stan has offered to let Kyle fuck him, but Kyle would rather be in Stan's mouth, looking down his chest to watch Stan's eyelashes flicker against his pale cheeks while he sucks Kyle in deep. He comes way too fast and so hard, shouting and grabbing two handfuls of Stan's hair, making him swallow it. He said he wanted to, anyway. Stan pulls back looking pleased with himself, and Kyle can only assume it's because he looks quite wrecked.

"You taste good," Stan says, crawling up to kiss him. "Check it out."

Kyle moans and lets Stan demonstrate the aftertaste of his come, which is bitter and salty and enough to make his cock twitch tiredly when he tastes it on Stan's tongue. They kiss for a long time, Stan lazily humping Kyle's thigh. 

"Want to fuck me?" Kyle asks. He puts his fingers on Stan's spine so he can feel the shiver that always moves through him when he offers. Stan nods. 

"All day long," he says. He reaches down to squeeze Kyle's ass into his hands, sighing like it's a long needed drink of water. "Gonna fill this ass so good," he says, whispering this against Kyle's lips. "I'm gonna come so hard in you, fuck, I've been saving it up for this tight little ass. You want it dripping out of you, down your legs, all sticky on your thighs? Want me to make you dirty inside, all filled up with my dirty come?"

Kyle is hard again, and laughing. Stan grins down at him and bites at his lip. They used to have dirty talk competitions. Stan always won.

"You should do this for a living," Kyle says.

"Fuck your ass?" Stan asks, already rubbing his fingers into the crack, making Kyle shudder.

"Dirty talk," Kyle says. "Like, phone sex." 

"I don't think they have phone sex anymore," Stan says. "Porn is all online now." 

"You'd know."

"I have to beat off to something when you're not around."

Stan acts like it's Kyle who periodically goes away. Kyle doesn't want to think about that right now. He flattens his hands on Stan's chest and pushes him up a bit.

"Get the lube," Kyle says. "I can't wait." 

"You still keep it in the same place?"

"Of course." Kyle isn't sure why he should be offended by that question. Stan seems amused by his reaction.

"Well, you're drinking pulp these days," he says, leaning back and sliding off the couch. "I don't want to make unfair assumptions about your lube storage habits."

Getting fucked by Stan is always as good as Kyle remembered it, and he's not sure if he'd be relieved or devastated if it ever wasn't. Kyle comes again while Stan fucks him, and that's what sets Stan off, his teeth grazing Kyle's throat when he shouts and unloads inside him. They stay connected afterward, because it's what they've always done, because it feels so good, Stan getting soft inside him, Stan so unwilling to let him go. Kyle experiences an ephemeral certainty while Stan lies on top of him, licking Kyle's neck with just the tip of his tongue, soft and tired. He's sure that this is where he should be, whatever happens next. 

"I wanna live here," Stan says.

"On my couch?"

Stan snorts. "In you." 

"Okay."

"Okay? You'll let me?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Unpack. Settle in." 

Kyle isn't sure if they're close to talking about something heavy and heartbreaking or not. He plays with Stan's hair and watches dust motes sailing through the light from the window. He wants to live here, too, in Stan's arms, pressed against his heartbeat. This is what he wants from every relationship: Stan. Nothing else fits.

Nick calls a few hours later, while they're watching cartoons and eating cereal, Kyle in fresh boxer shorts and Stan in Kyle's bathrobe. Kyle takes the phone into the bedroom so Stan won't be able to hear his half of the conversation. 

"Is your friend okay?" Nick asks. 

"He's fine," Kyle says. "It really was just a scratch. He was just drunk."

"Does he - have some kind of problem?"

"No, no," Kyle says. Yes, but Kyle doesn't even talk about this with his mother, not anymore. "He just had a hard week at work."

"Yeah? What does he do?"

"Um, urban planning? So, yeah. But he's fine, he's good." Kyle is distracted, thinking about Stan out there on the couch, the sun through the window spilling onto his chest, that particular spot that Kyle wants to cuddle back into. 

"I forgot to thank you for dinner," Nick says. "In all of the excitement."

"Oh, yeah, no problem. We should do it again sometime."

There's a pause. Nick can feel himself getting brushed off, and Kyle can feel him feeling that. He's sure he'll regret it, curse himself, fruitlessly try to apologize, but right now he can feel Stan's come leaking out of him, just a little trickle pooling in the seat of his boxer shorts, and it's making nothing else matter very much. 

"So," Nick says. "Okay. I guess I'll see you in class."

Kyle hangs up and returns to Stan, who is trying not to look wounded by the fact that Kyle took that call. He's finished his cereal, and Kyle takes the empty bowl from him, settling it on the table beside the couch. He unties Stan's robe and pulls it open, crawling inside to huddle against the warmth of Stan's chest. 

"Can we both fit?" Stan asks. He closes the flaps of the robe around Kyle's back and ties the belt around him so that they're both contained within it. Kyle closes his eyes and listens to Stan's heartbeat, letting it make promises to him that Stan won't be able to keep. Stan rubs Kyle's neck and toys with his curls. Kyle knows he wants to ask about the phone call. 

"So, this guy," Stan finally says. "Your dinner guest. You said-" 

"Well, it's negated now," Kyle says, a little sharply. "I mean, you just fucked me."

"Oh, right, I'd forgotten that."

"What did you think, I'd just fool around with you and go back to him after you skipped out on me?"

"I don't skip out on you," Stan says. "I live ten minutes away. You could come see me, too, you know." 

"I'm afraid of what I might find," Kyle says, mumbling. He wants to rewind, to pretend they don't need to have this conversation. Inside the robe, he wraps his arms around Stan's back. "Are you really sitting around waiting for me to show up?"

Stan huffs. He sounds hurt. "Are you?" he asks.

"I stopped trying to anticipate what you would do when we were ten years old." 

That was maybe the worst thing he could have said, but Stan's fingers are still moving on the back of Kyle's neck, softly. His heart is beating faster.

"Am I keeping you from having a normal life?" Stan asks. 

"No," Kyle says. "I'm the one doing that. But I don't want a normal life." He hugs himself more tightly against Stan, feeling panicked. He needs at least a few days of this. "I want you." 

"Kyle, I puked on you last night." 

"That's just how you get when we're not together." Actually, Stan will progressively get like that when they are together, over time, until Kyle blows up at him and calls him a selfish loser. They both know that, and so they say nothing for awhile. 

"I want to be good enough for you," Stan says. "Not just a good lay who eats your cereal. I want to be your best friend again."

"You are my best friend," Kyle says, afraid Stan is trying to tell him he doesn't think they should have sex anymore.

"No, I'm not," Stan says. "I'm this parasite who pukes on you."

"Well, what am I supposed to do about that?" Kyle asks, getting angry. "Wait until you're fifty and you've figured things out? Look, if the love of my life came along and swept me off my feet, that'd be one thing. But you are the love of my life, and if you're not going to sweep me off my feet then I'm at least going to take what I can get. I feel like you're blaming me for indulging you, like this is my fault or something-"

"Jesus, Kyle! I'm not saying that at all."

"Then what are you saying, Stan?" Kyle sits up, the robe's belt coming untied around his back. "What is the solution? What do you propose?"

He shouldn't have used that word. Stan's eyes get wider. 

"A partial lobotomy?" Stan says, looking queasy.

"For you or me?"

"Um, both?"

"At this point, that sounds appealing." Kyle climbs out of Stan's lap and begins collecting cereal bowls.

"Where are you going?" Stan asks. He's sitting there naked on the couch, legs spread, the robe wide open, and he looks so adorably pathetic, so pink and raw and vulnerable, that Kyle would probably say yes if he proposed marriage right now. 

"I'm going to do the dishes," Kyle says. "That's what I do when I'm stressed out. I clean things." Nothing relaxes him quite as much as scrubbing Stan clean after a bad bender, but he doesn't think Stan would appreciate being mentioned as an example of one of the things Kyle derives satisfaction from cleaning.

"Maybe I should try it," Stan says. "I should help you, anyway." He gets up and refastens the robe, following Kyle into the kitchen. "I used to be able to move heaven and earth for you. Remember? If you needed internal organs, I got you internal organs."

"Yeah, I remember," Kyle says. It hurts to think about it now. "But I don't need internal organs at the moment. Just rinse these and put them in the dishwasher, please." 

There's something oddly gratifying about watching Stan do this, as if it's an important step in Kyle having an influence on Stan's behavior. He's accepted that he never really will, but it's still nice to get a small taste of what that might be like, Kyle telling Stan to put things in order and Stan actually doing it. Stan looks at Kyle when he's done, as if he's awaiting his next instruction.

"Come here," Kyle says, holding his arms out. Stan does, and Kyle kisses him, letting Stan lift him up until he's seated on the kitchen counter, Stan wedged between his legs.

"You don't have anywhere to be today, do you?" Stan asks. "Sunday is my off day." 

"No," Kyle says. "And hey, um. I'm proud of you, alright? I mean, you look good. I don't want you to dig ditches for very long, it'll fuck up your back, but for now, like. I don't know. You've got some color in your cheeks."

"That's from you," Stan says, and Kyle grins against his mouth, then kisses him back, getting hard inside his boxers. He knows they'll spend all day fucking and lying around like sloths, stretched out on top of each other while they watch cop drama reruns from five years ago, and he's needed this more than he knew. He can't truly relax without Stan, even if he's taking a break from studying and job seeking, because half of the life that he's working for is missing and imperiled when Stan isn't nearby. Sometimes he wishes that weren't true, but he knows now that it always will be.

Kyle sleeps on the couch for hours, pressed beneath Stan and waking occasionally to the drone of the television. He feels like he's in a dream about how he thought his life would be, Stan's cheek pressed against his back, his fingers tickling over the point of Kyle's hip under the blanket they've pulled over themselves. In his actual dreams, Stan needs organs, and Kyle doesn't know how to get them for him. He'd cut his own out if he could, but Stan won't let him. When he wakes up he rolls onto his back, moaning irritably. He lets Stan kiss him, realizing as he does that his breath is probably terrible; he never brushed his teeth this morning. In all the excitement. He opens his eyes, wishing he was coherent enough to explain to Stan that the fact that he doesn't mind the idea of Stan tasting his bad breath is proof that he can't be expected to love anybody else, even if it means giving up normalcy and all that goes with it. 

"The sun's going down," Stan says, and Kyle laughs. 

"So?"

"So, I don't know. It was a good day." 

Kyle nods. Stan doesn't drink during the day anymore, but after sundown he's usually half-gone, and can't be counted on to remember any fine details. Kyle tucks some silky black hair behind Stan's ear. He's always loved Stan's hair, the polar opposite of his own: sleek and dark and effortlessly pretty. 

"I'll order a pizza if you're hungry," Kyle says, and Stan nods. Kyle thinks of that unopened bottle of Burgundy in the kitchen. Nick probably spent thirty bucks on it, if not more. He likes Kyle, wanted to impress him, but Kyle was too impressed at seven years old to really give anyone else a chance. He'd rather drink that wine with Stan, and he will, with mushroom and onion pizza, their favorite. Kenny hated the mushrooms and Cartman hated the onions, and Kyle would grin at Stan while those two complained and picked things off, because that pizza was like a edible symbol of the way the super best friends always used to win, the light around them that they didn't question and thought would never fade.

The wine is good, and it stains both their mouths purple before the pizza has even arrived. Stan doesn't quite get drunk; it takes a lot to get him drunk. Kyle sort of does, and he talks about when they were kids, gives Stan the start of a story and listens to him tell the rest, licking up the side of his neck when he particularly approves of the way Stan is telling it, or of the way he's laughing, which is like the way he used to laugh. They eat half the pizza, have sex on the living room floor, then eat the rest of the pizza. 

"This is so undignified," Kyle says, arranging the blanket over his lap. "Eating naked." 

"You're hilarious," Stan says. He touches Kyle's nose, maybe a little drunk after all. "You and your rules. What if I decided to join a nudist hippie colony that resided in an elaborate network of tree houses? What then, Kyle?"

"You would never leave me for nudist hippies."

"Yeah? I think you'd come with me. I think you'd love it."

Maybe they're again talking about something bigger and more weighty than they really have the vocabulary for, but they're both grinning, kissing, dragging each other closer. Kyle knows he wouldn't love that sort of tree house life, that he wouldn't even survive it, and Stan knows he would come crawling back to the real world after a few months, anyway. He always does. 

Once, Kyle resolved to end it for good. They were twenty. Kyle had done a lot of crying, and Stan had served three months in real prison for stabbing some redneck with a broken beer bottle during a fight in a bar parking lot. That was the end, and Kyle felt confident about it, and ready to become a different person, even if that person was someone he couldn't yet imagine knowing, let alone becoming. Then, for Kyle's twenty-first birthday, Stan showed up at at six o'clock in the morning with an elaborately wrapped present. Had he snorted coke on the way over? Almost definitely, but the present was a Tonka radio-controlled bulldozer circa 2005, and they spent the rest of the afternoon driving it around the parking lot of Kyle's dorm. That was when Kyle knew that his seven-year-old self had long ago made the decision to never give up on Stan, no matter what, in the insanely literal way that only a seven-year-old can decide such a thing, and he stopped trying to fight that kid, because it was no use.

They stay up late, talking in bed about what they would do if they won millions of dollars. Kyle knows Stan's life wouldn't be very different, and his own wouldn't be, either, not in any important way. They pretend it would, that they would travel and erect stunningly efficient charities, that they would pay off their parents' debts and thereby earn some measure of forgiveness. At some point, Kyle starts thinking about the morning: the newspaper, the coffee, an omelet, sex and napping like a painfully sweet layer cake. Then he remembers that Stan has ditches to dig, and that he's got class, and that they didn't actually move into a tree house colony, they just talked about it. 

"Hey," Kyle says when Stan starts to fall asleep, his fist curled limply against Kyle's chest. Stan blinks awake, but just barely, and maybe he's already in that place where he won't remember anything. Because he probably is, Kyle strokes his cheek and says, "I'd come with you, you're right. To the tree houses. You should ask me to follow you, 'cause I would, I'd go anywhere."

"That's why I never asked," Stan says, and he's smiling, but then he's not, moisture pooling under his heavy eyelids as he spreads his fingers over Kyle's collarbone, one finger dipping into the hollow of his throat. "You know? That's why I never brought you with me." 

Maybe Kyle knew that, because he's known for a long time that Stan is in a place where he wouldn't want anyone he loved to follow. But Kyle isn't just anyone. He's the one who owes Stan his internal organs. He's the one who pressed his heart into Stan's chest in return, and didn't tell him, because Stan wouldn't have wanted him to give that up, but he did, and he thinks Stan knows it, really. He thinks Stan knows he has it, most of the time.


	3. Chapter 3

Stan is canning jalapenos in the main house when Ike bursts in looking slightly winded. He's wearing a hat that makes Stan think of Craig Tucker, with flaps over the ears and dangling knit braids. Ike grins widely, erasing any resemblance to Craig. 

"Good news, everybody," he says, though Stan is the only one in the kitchen. "Harper is pregnant again." 

"That's awesome, dude." Stan actually thinks it's kind of distressing, considering Ike and Harper's financial problems, but he puts down the jar he was working on and crosses the room to give Ike a celebratory hug, because he seems happy about this. Ike and Harper already have a two-year-old daughter, Daphne, who everybody on the farm calls Daffy and who sometimes reminds Stan a lot of Kyle, which makes no sense, since Ike and Kyle aren't biologically related. 

"We just found out," Ike says, beaming. "You're the first person I've told. I'm gonna call my parents tonight - my mom's gonna flip." 

"Flip in a good way, right?" Stan says. 

"In a good way, totally," Ike says. "Though I guess she and Dad will use this as an excuse to lay into me about getting a 'real job' or some shit."

Sheila was aghast when she found out that Harper was pregnant with Daffy, in part because Harper was only twenty at the time, Ike only twenty-two. Ike and Harper refuse to get married, because they both believe that the institution of marriage is defunct until gay marriage is legal. Stan appreciates the gesture, but he agrees with Ike's parents that marriage still means something and that those who can enjoy its legal benefits should probably take advantage of them, especially when they have children together. He tries not to get involved in the debate. He knows Sheila and Gerald will be happy to have another grandchild, even if they might have cautioned Ike and Harper that a second baby would be financially unwise. Daffy is the light of her grandparents' lives, and they're always begging Ike to move Harper and Daffy to Colorado so they can see them more often. 

"I feel like I should pass around cigars or something," Ike says. "What's the hippie commune equivalent of a cigar?"

"Um, a joint?" Stan says, smirking. They don't actually live on a hippie commune, but that's what everyone back in South Park calls it when they gossip about how Stan followed Ike up into the wilds of Seattle to work on the organic farm that Ike's friend founded. 

"Damn, I have to give up weed again," Ike says, groaning. "I forgot about that part." Last time Harper was pregnant, Ike gave up pot and alcohol as a gesture of solidarity. Stan was impressed, and sort of inspired. He went three months without a drink last year, just to see if he could do it. He's back to drinking microbrews and smoking with his co-workers at parties, but he doesn't touch hard liquor anymore, unless he's back in South Park and getting fucked up with Kenny. Which is the reason he hasn't been back to South Park in two years.

"Do you think you could break the news to Kyle?" Ike asks. "He took it sorta hard when we had Daffy." 

"Why is hearing it from me going to make it any better?" Stan asks. He pretends to be focused on his canning, though all he can see now is that the jalapeno peppers are roughly the color of Kyle's eyes. "He needs to get over himself, anyway. It's pretty pathetic to be jealous of your two-year-old niece."

"He's not jealous of Daffy, he's jealous of me," Ike says. "'Cause I have a family. And 'cause I stole you away from him, or whatever he thinks."

"That's ridiculous," Stan says, muttering. He hasn't called Kyle in months, and he's pretty sure that's why Ike wants him to be the one to tell Kyle about the new baby. He's always trying to push them back together, which is ironic, because Ike did more or less steal Stan away by inviting him to move up here three years ago. He was saving Stan's life and they all knew it, Kyle included, but that didn't stop Kyle from raging at Stan for abandoning him when he left.

"Just give him a call," Ike says. "It'll sound like I'm bragging if I'm the one who tells him, and I don't want him hearing it from Mom and Dad."

Ike dashes off to tell more people about the baby, and Stan finishes his work, distracted and a little sloppy now that he's dreading the phone call Ike asked him to make. Talking to Kyle is like slowly working a knife in between his ribs, trying to pierce all the way through until the point comes out his back without doing any irreparable damage. It's painful, and fruitless, and he always feels drained of blood afterward. Kyle is still in Denver, giving at least eighty hours of his life a week to the huge law firm that hired him just before Stan left town. He's perennially exhausted, endlessly irritable, and probably more unhappy than Stan was when he left, though he'd never admit it. According to Kyle, everything is working out great for him. He has 'no time' for dating and hasn't been up to visit Stan and Ike since last summer. He slept in Stan's bed during the visit, and Stan got reaccustomed to falling asleep inside Kyle, who still fits perfectly against his chest and around his cock. When Kyle had to return to work after only three days it was like tearing a band aid off of a gaping wound. Stan is pretty sure they're both still bleeding.

After finishing a few of his regular chores around the farm, Stan returns to his room, which is in an attic space over the studio where the owner's wife paints during the day. Stan's room is small but sunny, with a big window overlooking the farm, and he's come to like the smell of acrylic paint that wafts up from below, though he could do without Rochelle's taste in music, which tends toward weird operatic bellowing with flute accompaniment. Rochelle must have called it quits early today, because there's no music coming from downstairs. Stan goes to the little mini-fridge at the end of his bed and pulls out a beer. It's an organic pilsner from a local brewery that he and Ike walk to sometimes when they need to get away from all the hippies. Stan supposes he's a hippie now, too, and Ike definitely qualifies, but sometimes they still need to feel like the kids from the small mountain town who shot off fireworks for fun and ate red meat. 

Stan props a few pillows against the wall and sits on his bed, watching the sunlight fade outside. It's fall, and the farm's pumpkin patch is in full swing at the front of the property, selling fat carving pumpkins and organic cider. Stan will have to work the register tomorrow morning, and he's not looking forward to it, though some of the kids are cute. He generally prefers the tasks he can do alone, especially if they involve being outdoors. Being surrounded by fresh air and nature sounds makes him feel sane and serene, something he should have figured out long ago. He's glad he moved here, even if it cost him the one thing that made him want to become a better man in the first place. He looks at his cell phone, which is charging on his bedside table. Figuring he might as well get this over with, he picks it up and dials Kyle's number. It's an hour later in Denver, but Kyle will still be at work. He's always at work.

"What?" Kyle says when he answers.

"Really?" Stan says, reclining again, his half-finished beer resting on his stomach. "That's how you answer the phone now?"

"Oh, sorry," Kyle says. His tone is particularly poisonous; he must have had a long day. "Let me rephrase: Kyle Broflovski's office, how can I put aside the bottomless work I'm drowning in to help you, Mr. Marsh?"

"Sounds like things are going well," Stan says, wishing Kyle could see his grin, though it would probably offend him somehow.

"Stan, what is it, seriously?" Kyle asks. Stan can picture him clearly, bent over with both elbows on his desk, horrible posture, his tie loosened and slightly crooked. "Is Ike okay?"

"Yeah," Stan says. "And I am, too, thanks for asking." 

"I know you're okay," Kyle says. "I can hear it in your smug hippie voice."

"Wow, you are in an award-winning mood. Want me to call back later?"

"No - sorry. Sorry." Kyle sighs. Stan wants to rub his shoulders even more than he wants to fuck him, which is a lot. "I'm just - one of the other associates missed a deadline, and we're all under heat for it, and I'm gonna be here until at least nine and I forgot to eat lunch -"

"Was it Cartman?" Stan asks. "The other associate who missed a deadline?"

"No, God, I'd be cheering if it was him. He can do no wrong, as far as the partners are concerned. He's such a lazy son of a bitch, but they like people who are full of shit, because 'confidence' is important, and he's the fullest bucket of shit there is." 

"That's true," Stan says, grinning again. He was apocalyptically jealous when he found out that Cartman and Kyle were both taking associate positions at the same big Denver firm. Who knew Cartman had even gone to law school? Not Stan, and he got the feeling Kyle had kept that from him so that he wouldn't feel like a loser in comparison, which only made him angrier in the long run. The whole Cartman thing played a part in the blow out fight they had after Stan announced that he was taking up Ike's offer to move to Seattle. He envisioned Cartman and Kyle becoming friends again, gleefully co-authoring corporate mergers and snickering about the hippie frolicking that Stan and Ike were doing in their sorry attempt to be real grown-ups. Instead, Cartman has become Kyle's enemy again, competing for the attention of the firm's partners and sabotaging Kyle whenever possible.

"Ike wanted me to call you," Stan says, and then he feels bad, because he doesn't want Kyle to think he didn't want to call himself, even though he didn't. "He has some news." 

"Oh, fuck me, is that girl pregnant again?"

"Yep." 

"Jesus, aren't they already on food stamps? What is he thinking? Is she going to have it?"

"Of course they're going to have it," Stan says, slightly offended on behalf of Ike's unborn baby. Stan is Daffy's godfather. "He's really excited, actually. You should be happy for him."

"Yeah, Stan, that's easy for you to say. You're not the one who will have to take care of him and the whole litter whenever he finally goes broke and comes crawling home for help." 

"God, listen to you," Stan says, his stomach twisting, because he knows he sounded like this to Kyle and everyone else for a long time. "You need a vacation. You should come visit."

"Vay - are you serious? Did I mention that I'm drowning? I thought at the beginning that if I worked the hardest and stayed the latest that would impress them, but it turns out that just makes them aware that they can dump as much work on me as they want and never hear a complaint." 

"I thought you liked it, though?" Stan says. "I mean, the actual work?"

"I'd like it if I felt like I had time to do it right! I'm reading over my drafts in the hallway on the way to turning them in, sweating over the idea that there might be a typo, and I don't even think the partners review things as closely as they should." He stops there to breathe, and Stan withholds a sympathetic moan. If he was still in Denver, he would have brought Kyle lunch. Dinner, too, and a blow job under his desk if he would allow it. 

"This is what I signed up for," Kyle says. "This is what every associate goes through in the first few years. It's fine. It's good. I'm lucky to have a job."

Stan sighs into the phone, hoping that Kyle won't interpret his sympathy as condescension. That's happened before.

"You're not going to forget to eat dinner, are you?" Stan asks. 

"I don't know," Kyle says. "I have some peanut butter crackers in my desk in case of emergency." 

"Tonight's my dinner duty night," Stan says. "I think I'm gonna make turkey chili. Last time Harper was pregnant she was really into turkey chili." 

"I can't believe how irresponsible she is," Kyle says. "Were they not even using protection? God, did they do this on purpose?"

"Don't you like Daffy?" Stan asks. He knows the answer to this question, and hopes it will steer Kyle in a more forgiving direction. 

"Of course I like her! She's the cutest kid I've ever seen in my life. I'm not blaming her for the fact that her parents have the maturity of someone her age."

"They've got their school debt, but the farm is really doing okay," Stan says. "I mean, it's pumpkin season. That means extra cash for everyone."

"Oh, great, so why don't you all have babies? Pumpkin season, Stan? Jesus. I'm glad you guys are having fun living in tree houses and making finger paintings about your feelings. I'll be here trying to live in the real world so the next time my criminally uninsured brother falls out of a fucking apple tree and breaks his arm I can foot the bill." 

"Your parents paid for the arm thing, Kyle."

"Yeah, this time! They're getting old, Stan! My dad is talking about retiring, and Ike is just getting started in terms of offspring production."

"Offspring production, Kyle?"

"Look, dude, Jesus - I'm glad you guys are having fun climbing trees and carving pumpkins. I mean, fuck, Stan, you sound good. Ike tells me you're doing good. I'm happy for you, okay? I'm ecstatic. And good for my brother if he wants to keep pumping out adorable children who will outshine anything I do just by virtue of existing. I just wish you'd all stop rubbing my face in it." 

"Rubbing your - I called to ask how you're doing!"

"You called 'cause Ike told you to!"

There's silence on the line. Stan drinks from his beer, knowing that Kyle will hear the click of his swallowing and worry. Kyle doesn't really believe that Stan could be doing this well, and Stan can't blame him. Kyle had to deal with the old Stan for fifteen years. 

"I miss you," Stan says, making rings on his jeans with the condensation on the bottom of the beer bottle. "I still haven't washed my pillowcase."

"Oh - Stan - that's disgusting! I was there over a year ago." He sounds a little pleased in addition to his disgust, and Stan wonders if he's smiling.

"It smells like your hair," Stan says. "Just a little. It's fading." 

"You'll have to come to South Park if you want to see me," Kyle says. "There's no way I could get away." 

"What about at Thanksgiving?"

"Are you kidding me? That's one of our busiest times of the year, and the partners notice the associates who work through the holidays, believe me. Or they'd better, anyway. This year. But Ike and Harper are coming down here, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Stan says. 

"And you're not - you're not coming with them?"

"I can't," Stan says, getting hot inside his shirt just thinking about it. South Park is too strong a reminder of who he used to be. It turns him into that guy again, every time. "Last time - I -" 

"No, I know, forget it," Kyle says. "I just. I want to see you, too, but what would be the point? You have your life there, and I'm here. Last summer - when I had to leave -"

"I know," Stan says. "I was just thinking about it."

They're quiet again. Outside, the cicadas have started up and the hue of the sunset is making the clouds look heavy, throwing a gold shadow beneath them. Stan wishes Kyle was here, under his arm, sneaking sips of his beer, but he knows Kyle would never tolerate the hippies. Even during his three day visit he sneered openly at their hygiene and complained nonstop about the lack of air conditioning in Stan's room.

"Want to have phone sex?" Stan asks, to lighten the mood. They did it a few times after Kyle left last summer, but it just bummed them out in the end, because there was no one there to cuddle up to afterward. Kyle laughs. 

"Yeah, I can just see it," he says. "Some partner walks in to invite me to dinner and I've got my dick out at my desk." 

"They're inviting you to dinner now? That's awesome." 

"No," Kyle says, groaning. "That was just part of my fantasy about beating off to the sound of your voice. Look, I gotta go. If I don't finish this brief in an hour somebody's going to throw me out a window."

"No, they won't. Not if I have anything to say about it." 

"Yeah, well, you don't, do you?" 

"Tell Cartman hello for me," Stan says, wounded by that. "Tell him I really hope he's enjoying seeing you every day, since he's the one who deserves to."

"Don't get started on that shit." 

"You know that's why he took that job. Just to torture you-"

"Stan, I have to go! Tell Ike congratulations. And buy him some goddamn condoms. I'll talk to you later, okay? Take care of yourself." 

"Yeah, you too," Stan says, though he's given up on that ever happening. Kyle might be making more money than the entire farm, but he's driving himself into the ground to do it. "Bye."

He finishes his beer after he hangs up with Kyle, thinking about the others that are lined up on the door of the mini fridge. He has rules for himself: one before dinner, one while making dinner and/or socializing in the main house, and one during dinner. He breaks that rule sometimes, especially when the Oregon hippies come to visit and bring cases of wine from their vineyard, but for the most part he's doing okay. He usually only wants to get wasted when he starts thinking about how far away Kyle is, like now.

Stan puts the empty bottle in the recycling bin and enacts his usual plan to replace the old and treacherous pleasure of getting trashed: jerking off. He's got just enough time before he's due at the main house for his dinner shift. He takes off his jeans and his boxers and stretches out on his back in bed, watching the light illuminate the colors of the hand blown glass on the small chandelier that hangs from his ceiling. It was a gift from Harper during her glass blowing phase. Most of the stuff in Stan's room was handmade by hippies. Ike made the shade on the lamp beside Stan's bed out of sailcloth and chicken wire. It's hideous, but Stan loves it. Kyle was horrified by it when he visited. Thinking of this, Stan smiles up at the ceiling and starts touching himself idly. They had such good sex here in this room, despite Kyle's complaints about the temperature. Afterward they'd both be sweaty, muscles softened and shaky, and Stan would lick the sweat from the back of Kyle's neck while he lingered inside him, so fucking happy that his eyes would water.

Stan closes his eyes and thinks about the way Kyle rode him in this room, one hand around his cock and the other braced on Stan's chest, his eyes muggy and his mouth open, curls plastered to his damp forehead. Remembering how good those days were and how short they felt just makes Stan want to weep, so he switches to pure fantasy: bending Kyle over his desk at the firm and telling whoever came to the door to get lost without even pausing, his cock still hammering into Kyle's ass while some guy in a suit stood there in shock. He tightens his hand and thinks about how Kyle would cry with relief when Stan first sank into him, over a year since the last time, and, God, he'd be so tight, so overwhelmed by the feeling of having Stan inside him again. In the fantasy, Stan leans down to nuzzle at Kyle's neck, pinning his limp hands to the desk. He promises to be gentle and Kyle says no, he wants it hard, wants to feel it the next day at work when he's sitting in meetings, his ass still tender because Stan fucked him so well.

Stan says Kyle's name when he comes; he almost always does. It's soft and small and someone who wasn't expecting it might not even recognize it as Kyle's name, but who could know Stan well enough to see him like this and not know that Kyle's is the only name he'll ever utter as he flips over the edge of his orgasm? He's never been with anybody but Kyle, and he hopes he never will be, even though he can't see a way around their current situation. Kyle would never give up everything he's worked for to come here and till organic soil, and Stan can never go back there. Even Denver makes him feel claustrophobic, and Kyle still lives in South Park, where the rent is cheaper.

Depressed, Stan dresses and goes down to the main house, hoping that the relentless hippie optimism of the others will cheer him up. It does, for the most part, everybody hugging Ike and Harper as they arrive and learn the good news. Stan still has an extra beer after dinner, while he sits around talking with Ike and some of the other guys about fatherhood. 

"Is Stan the man ever going to settle down and have a family?" Hiram asks, gesturing to Stan with his pipe. Hiram is the farm's owner, an older guy who met Ike while vacationing in South Park, still a favorite recreational spot for hippies. 

"I don't know," Stan says, looking at Ike, wanting to be rescued. 

"Man, do not ask," Ike says. He seems a little stoned. Apparently his stint of solidarity starts tomorrow. "Stan's been in love with my brother since before I was born. Since diapers."

"Thanks," Stan says, narrowing his eyes at Ike. "Thanks for that." 

"Wait, your brother?" Hiram says. He knows Stan is gay; it's the reason the hippies have accepted him into the fold despite his clean shaven appearance and wistfulness for fireworks. "The corporate type?"

"Yeah, the corporate type," Ike says. "He's a lawyer at this huge, soulless firm in Denver. The proudest moment of his life so far was the day he bought his Lexus." 

"Man," Hiram says, looking back to Stan. "Bummer."

"Yeah, bummer," Stan says. He gets up, draining his beer. "I'm gonna hit the sack." 

"Don't leave just because I brought up Kyle," Ike says, waving his hand through the air, definitely drunk. Stan shakes his head.

"It's not that," he says. "I've got pumpkin duty tomorrow. Gotta get up early. Night, guys." 

"Hey, sweet dreams, Stan," Hiram calls as he's leaving. "And that turkey chili was killer, thanks."

Back in his room, Stan eyes the mini fridge but doesn't open it. He used to restrict himself to beers from the fridge at the main house, because his guilt over taking them from the communal supply kept him from going overboard, but that made him obsess over the amount of beers he did or didn't drink so much that he would try to convince himself that he needed a fifth of vodka to make up for the fact that he'd only had one beer. He'll get rid of the fridge if it becomes a problem, but so far it actually helps.

Stan climbs into bed and stares up at the chandelier, its colors muted in the moonlight. He wonders where Kyle is now, what he's looking at, if he's even still awake. Again, he imagines Kyle bent over his desk, and this time he's passed out with his face in a dusty old legal book, his pen still in his hand. Stan moans and rolls onto his side, wrapping himself around the pillow that still smells very faintly of Kyle. It's been more than a year since he held Kyle, since he saw him smile and heard him laugh. That should be enough to make him want ten bottles of vodka, but somehow it doesn't make him want to drink at all. It's like he thinks he can still earn Kyle back if he just keeps being good, or at least better. It still feels like his hard won faith in himself matters, here in the dark on the hippie commune, with Kyle thousands of miles away, in the one place where Stan can't go to him. Stan laughs against his pillow when he realizes what's happened, though it's not funny at all: he's finally managed to recapture his sense of hope, now that he and Kyle have officially found themselves in a hopeless situation.

*

Three weeks later, Stan has the busiest shift he's ever had at the pumpkin patch and barely stops himself from snapping at a mother of three who drove all the way from the city for the farm's famous cider and old school ambiance, which were written up in the _Seattle Times_ last week, thereby tripling their business. They were out of the cider by the time the woman arrived, and down to just a few of the scragglier pumpkins, and if this lady couldn't have the satisfaction of perfectly brewed apple cider and lucrative pumpkin perusing on a picturesque fall afternoon, she was at least going to have the pleasure of complaining to Stan about her disappointment at length. Stan kept thinking she was angling for a refund, but she hadn't even paid for anything. He had to bite his tongue to keep from asking her if she wanted him to write her a personal check to reimburse her for the gas she'd used to drive up here, and if he actually had a checking account he might have. By the time his shift ends he's yanking off his sweater and balling it up in his hands, overly warm from irritation alone. He's glad to have the mini fridge to look forward to, because he needs a beer and some goddamn privacy. He's seen way too many people today, and he might even skip the communal dinner and walk up to Zippy's for a slice of pizza. 

Given his mood, he should want to punch a hole in the door of his room when he opens it and finds someone sitting on his bed, sobbing into his hands, but the person is Kyle, and Stan actually whimpers at the sight of him, not even giving his surprise time to settle in before he crosses the room in two strides and falls onto the bed, throwing his arms around Kyle. 

"Dude – what – ha – how –" Stan can't even string two words together, not quite laughing or crying but doing some pinched up combination of both as he rocks Kyle in his arms. Kyle clambers into his lap and holds on tight, still crying.

"They fuh- fired me," Kyle says, actually wailing at the end of that statement, as if he's just taken a spear in the back. "They fired me, they fucking laid me off. Stan. Stan! I'm unemployed, oh, God, I'm a failure." 

"Those fuckers," Stan says, and he is angry on Kyle's behalf, sad that this turn of events has made him so upset, but he's still smiling, hiding it against Kyle's neck, because Kyle is here, warm and real and perfect against his chest, Kyle is here. 

"I did everything," Kyle says, sobbing, his head resting on Stan's shoulder. "The pah – past two years of my life, Stan, I gave them everything, I did everything you're supposed to, everything. And they – they downsized, they let me go, they let me go and they kept fucking _Cartman_. Oh, God, he was gloating, he was-"

"Shh, don't worry about anything that fat fuck does," Stan says, though he did a lot of that himself over the past two years, worrying that Cartman was stealthily getting close to Kyle the way he did when they were kids. "Any company that values him over you fucking deserves him. He's probably siphoning funds or something. Hell, maybe all the partners are, and he's just blackmailing him. That'd be his style."

"Stan, what am I going to do?" A new wave of emotion seems to break inside Kyle's chest, and he quakes in Stan's arms, crying so hard that Stan is afraid he'll snap a rib. "I'm ruined, they ruined me, it's like being blacklisted, fired after barely two years as an associate –"

"It's not really a firing, though, right?" Stan rubs Kyle's back, already thinking about the fact that Kyle will sleep here tonight, in Stan's bed. He would kiss that complaining woman from earlier if he could, because suddenly it's the best day ever, every second of it heaven sent. "You just got laid off. Kyle, nobody will hold that against you. It's the economy, it's –"

"You don't understand how competitive it is right now!" Kyle sits back, his eyes a little wild and his hands closed into the front of Stan's t-shirt. "Laid off are code words for 'you were the least valuable person we had.' It means, 'we can get by without you.' Companies know that, Stan! Oh, God, what am I going to do, what am I going to _do_?"

"Shh, just – when did you find out?"

"Last night! Fucking five o'clock on a Friday, _God_ , it's such a cliché! I got in the car and drove here, I just, I'm sorry, I needed you, I need you so much –"

"Don't be sorry, Kyle, fuck." Stan kisses his forehead, his cheeks, trying to keep a crazy smile off his face, but he can feel the need to smile hugely rattling his bones, unfiltered happiness like the kind he used to feel when he was five years old and jumping into a giant enclosure of multi-colored balls at Whistlin' Willy's, Kyle jumping in beside him. "I'm so glad you came here," Stan says, smoothing his thumbs over Kyle's cheeks, sweeping the tears away. "I'm so glad you're here, Jesus."

"I knew you'd be glad this happened," Kyle says, more tears welling. "You wanted this to happen, didn't you? To teach me my lesson – about – about corporations or whatever the fuck you guys think you hate-"

"What? Fuck – no! I'm just glad to see you. I mean, I know this is tough, but you're gonna be okay, and Kyle, you're here, Jesus, you're actually here."

"I missed you so much," Kyle says, his shoulders still bouncing with sobs. "I was in hell without you, and for what?" He moans and throws his arms around Stan again, wrapping his legs around his back. "Fuck, you smell good. Stan, Jesus, what am I going to do?"

"Don't worry," Stan says, rubbing Kyle's back again. "Don't worry about anything, not yet. I'm gonna take care of you. That's why you came here, right? 'Cause you knew I'd take care of you?"

There's a lot riding on Kyle's answer. He leans back and sniffles, letting Stan wipe away more tears. 

"Yeah," Kyle says. "And, just. You don't know how hard it's been. Since you left."

"Um, yeah I do."

"Then why did you _go_ , Stan? Why can Ike make you feel better if I can't? Why are you only better now that you're far away from me?"

Kyle cries hard again, his head dropping back onto Stan's shoulder. Stan moans and rocks him, shushes him, pets his hair. He remembers this feeling from when they were kids. When Kyle was in trouble, Stan turned invincible. He would have punched his way through cement walls if he had to, and he feels like he could do that now, like he could do anything.

"I couldn't be there anymore," Stan says. "I didn't want to leave you, Jesus, that's why it took me so long to go. But I was in a rut there, we both knew it, and I wasn't getting better. And I love it here, I just. I just wish you were here, every day. And you're here, Kyle, and it's gonna be okay, I promise."

"Nuh – no it's not," Kyle says, and Stan hides his laugh in Kyle's unruly mop of hair, which looks like it hasn't been tended to in some time. "What am I going to do? I can't be like Ike, I have to take care of Ike, and he has all these buh – babies, and –"

"Stop." Stan lifts Kyle's chin and holds his face, kissing the corners of his wet eyes. "You don't have to take care of anyone. Maybe someday you will, but give yourself some time, okay? Give me two weeks. Let me take care of you for two weeks, and promise me you won't worry about anything."

"Oh, right," Kyle says, sniffling. "My rent – my car payment – fuck, Stan, my credit rating, I worked so hard to resurrect it –"

"You can pay your bills with unemployment checks," Stan says. "You were laid off – they didn't terminate you for performance reasons. That entitles you to unemployment, yeah?"

"I don't want to be on unemployment," Kyle says, wibbling. "Oh, God, I'm going to end up like Ike, only I won't get to enjoy it because I hate fuh – fucking hippies." He bursts into tears again, and Stan moans, hugging him closer. 

"How about me, huh?" Stan says. "I'm a fucking hippie now."

"You were always a hippie," Kyle says. He wraps his arms around Stan's neck and takes a deep, shuddering breath, letting it out in a whimper. "But you're my hippie. You don't count, because you're mine, and I'm your dying cause. I'm like a fucking manatee that you want to save or something."

Stan laughs, though maybe he shouldn't. He just can't help it, can't hold the sound of his happiness inside any longer. He squeezes Kyle and kisses his neck, which tastes like his tears, because they've leaked there, too. 

"Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?" Stan says. "If one of us is a manatee, it's me."

"Jesus, we're both manatees. The kind with gimpy flippers from boat collisions." 

"Aw, don't be mean." Stan says, not sure if he's protesting on behalf of gimpy manatees or the two of them. He kisses Kyle's lips experimentally, sighing into Kyle's mouth when it opens for him. He's hard against the seat of Kyle's pants, which is so insensitive, but his cock can't differentiate between Kyle's moods, or maybe he's actually turned on when Kyle is like this, when he needs him. Kyle is still wearing the clothes he wore to work on Friday, unless he stopped to change into a rumpled white collar shirt and black dress pants before making the trip up north. 

"You look good," Kyle says, rubbing his hands down over Stan's ears, cupping his jaw. "You're so – you're, like, happy, Stan, you're happy up here without me."

"No," Stan says. "If I'm happy it's because I feel like you'd be proud of me, if you saw me." He grins and bumps his nose against Kyle's. "And now you're seeing me. Fuck, I love you, I'm sorry, I just love you a lot."

"You're sorry." Kyle laughs. "You're sorry?" He kisses Stan again, deeply, and he's hard, too, pressing his cock to the flat of Stan's stomach. "In me, want you in me," he says, and Stan isn't sure if he hears it out loud or just reads it in Kyle's eyes, but he nods.

Stan promises to be gentle, and Kyle doesn't ask him not to be, just nods and parts his legs around Stan's body as Stan lowers him down to the bed. The afternoon is already fading outside, but it seems to do so more slowly than it has in recent weeks, matching their rhythm. Kyle is still sniffling a little as Stan carefully unbuttons his shirt and rubs his hands over Kyle's chest. He wants to tell Kyle that he looks cute in these clothes, but that might set Kyle off again, considering that he won't need to dress like this again until he starts interviewing for a new job. Stan doesn't want to think about that yet, and he doesn't want Kyle to think about anything except how Stan is going to see him through this, the way he did when they were kids. He hovers over Kyle while they kiss, letting Kyle pull off his t-shirt and fumble at the button on his jeans. His plan is to stay like this the whole time, tucked around Kyle like a blanket, keeping him safe.

"I drove so fast," Kyle says while Stan kisses his neck, Stan's wet fingers down between Kyle's legs, working him open. "I should have called, but - ah, I just -"

"You don't have to call," Stan says. He shakes his head and watches Kyle's eyes go blank when Stan rubs his prostate, his body arching up against Stan's. "If you ever want to be here, just come. I want you here all the time."

"St- ah, Stan, you - you don't even have a lock on your door!"

"What's gonna get stolen? That lamp shade Ike made me?"

Kyle laughs deliriously, his head thrown back. Stan licks him from the hollow of his throat to his chin, still fingering him, wanting to do this all day, until the last of the light has faded, because as soon as his cock is enclosed in that tight heat he's going to come, and it'll be over. Except that Kyle is here indefinitely, and Stan isn't sure he'll be able to let him go again. He sighs against Kyle's shoulder when he imagines being able to do this every day after work, splitting a beer afterward and not caring if Kyle drinks more than his share, because he'll be naked between Stan's legs, leaning back against his chest, watching the sun go down through the open window. 

As Stan predicted, he doesn't last long once he's inside Kyle, but it doesn't really matter, because Kyle likes him to stay there while he goes soft, and that's what Stan has needed more than anything. He pulls his worn quilt up over both of them while they kiss in the aftermath, Kyle's leg still hooked around Stan's hip, keeping him in place. 

"It was so terrible," Kyle says, wibbling again.

"Really? I thought it was pretty good. I mean, you came like three times-"

"I'm talking about getting laid off, Stan! Cartman was laughing at me when I cleaned out my office, when I was trying not to lose my shit and start crying where everyone could see-"

"He'll get what's coming to him someday," Stan says, because he has to believe that. "And you'll find a better job. Maybe, um. You could look for a job in Seattle?"

"Oh, you're just loving this, aren't you?" Kyle says, but there's no real venom in it. He's so tired, curled against Stan's chest, still clenching around the tip of his cock so that it won't slide out completely. "You think this is what I had coming to me. But I worked really hard, Stan, and I thought it meant something, all that overtime, all those nights and weekends-"

"You didn't seem happy," Stan says, not appreciating that accusation, even if Kyle is just blowing off steam.

"I was unhappy because you left me," Kyle says. "Not because of the job."

"Kyle. C'mon, we've talked about this. I didn't leave _you_ , I left Colorado. I wasn't doing you any good there, anyway. You were throwing stuff at me."

"Only when you deserved it."

"I'm not saying I didn't!"

"It just felt like I was some mistake you decided you need to leave behind," Kyle says, muttering. He groans and slides away from Stan. "Do you have something to drink?" he asks. Stan snorts.

"Yeah, beer. In that little fridge at the end of the bed."

"Beer?" Kyle makes a face. "Fine, if that's all you've got. I was hoping for whiskey. Do hippies drink whiskey?"

"Not usually," Stan says, annoyed with Kyle for pretending not to know why there isn't whiskey here, or maybe he wasn't sure that there wouldn't be. "They smoke pot, mostly, so you're out of luck." Stan and Kyle got high together toward the end of their senior year, and Kyle hated it; he was paranoid and weepy, and sick to his stomach for two days afterward. 

"I might give it another go," Kyle says. He crawls to the end of the bed and pulls open the mini-fridge, giving Stan a nice view of his recently fucked ass as he pulls out a beer. "You want one?" he asks. 

"No, thanks. Jesus, Kyle. You're making me hard again."

"What? How - oh." Kyle flushes and sits down at the end of the bed, hiding his ass. "Are these twist off?" he asks, fiddling with the cap. 

"No, but there's an opener on the side of the fridge. It's a magnet."

"Ah, I see. Thanks." Kyle remains at he end of the bed, sitting Indian style and drinking beer, studying Stan like he's trying to decide whether or not he deserves to spoon him. The sun is going down properly now. Kyle chugs his beer in record time and puts the empty bottle on top of the fridge. "I kind of want to get trashed," he says glumly. 

"That's fine," Stan says. "I'll look after you if you do. I owe you one. I owe you, like. A million." 

"God, look at this place," Kyle says, glancing around the room, his lip twitching with the effort not to sneer. "I forgot you don't even have a goddamn toilet." 

"You can pee in the sink," Stan says, gesturing to the big, tub-like sink over by the window. "That's what I do when I'm too lazy to go outside." He doesn't mention that he intentionally pees in the little vegetable garden behind the barn when he does make it outside, because it's good fertilizer. Peeing on the produce is farm policy, something that would horrify Kyle. 

"That's disgusting!" Kyle says, looking toward the sink, distressed. "You wash your dishes in that sink!"

"Only the breakfast ones. And urine is sterile, anyway."

"Urine is sterile? Really, Stan? Oh, God, what am I going to do?" Kyle moans and gets another beer from the fridge. 

"I told you, you're not allowed to worry for two weeks," Stan says, though he knows this tack is probably useless.

"How am I supposed to not worry when I can't even take a piss without stress?"

"What's there to be stressed about? There's a bathroom in the main house-"

"But I'm naked and I'm tired! I don't want to walk five minutes just to pee and then have to make chit chat with my brother's creepy friends once I get there."

"They're my creepy friends, too, you know." 

"Ike is going to have himself a laugh, isn't he?" Kyle chugs beer and walks on his knees across the bed, slumping against Stan's side when Stan gathers him in under his arm. 

"What, about you getting laid off?" Stan says. "Of course not. He's going to be really sad for you, dude. He loves you."

"I know he loves me, but he's an idiot. He doesn't understand what this means. He'll tell me to look at it as an opportunity to re-educate myself about what I need from life, or something."

"Would it be totally crazy to look at it that way?"

"Oh, God, don't you start on me, too. I already feel like a complete fool, I don't need you guys telling me that you knew I was one all along." 

"That's not what I'm saying and you know it." Stan takes the beer from Kyle and drinks some. "I'm just saying, consider Seattle."

"Of course I'm considering that! The whole way up here I was consoling myself by thinking I could look for jobs here, and see you all the time - but what's that going to mean, Stan? Aren't I poison to you or something? Are you going to revert to being a disaster if you have to tolerate my presence?"

"You need to calm down," Stan says. He hugs Kyle closer and kisses his forehead. "I refuse to think you could actually believe any of what you just said."

"Well, believe it. I feel I'm the thing you needed to get rid of in order to start over. And I'm proud of you, I am, but every time Ike called to tell me how great you were doing up here without me I felt like shit, like you'd finally figured out what you needed to exorcise from your life so you could be better, and it was me. And then that made me feel like shit all over again, because it was selfish, and I should be happy for you, and, oh, fuck, I don't know." Kyle finishes the beer and hands the bottle to Stan, who places it on the bedside table. He lets Kyle hide his face against the side of his neck and just moan for awhile. Stan rubs his back, thinking carefully about how he should respond to that.

"I think it's from when we were kids," Stan says. "I always had to be rescuing you from something. When you didn't need to be rescued anymore, I lost my whole fucking identity. Then I just kept hanging around waiting for you to need me, but you only needed me to fuck you."

"That's not true!" Kyle lifts his head. "I need this, too." He takes Stan's wrist and pulls his arm more snugly around him. "I need you to hold me while you listen to me complain for hours on end, and I need to make judgments about the fact that you pee in a sink, and I need - ah, everything, I never stop needing things from you, I just want to take every fucking thing you have and sit in a corner and hoard it forever." 

"Okay."

"How can you possibly agree to that?" Kyle asks, thumping his fist against Stan's chest. "Your life up here, I mean maybe you pee in a sink but it's peaceful. It's not going to be that way anymore if you have me around."

"Maybe it's peaceful but it's also boring, and lonely as fuck. Look, I'm not afraid of having you here. It's not going to make me relapse. The only time I want to get fucked up anymore is when I start thinking about how you're too far away from me." He kisses Kyle on the mouth, close-lipped at first, then deeper, wetter, and he feels the tension drain from Kyle's shoulders, not completely but significantly.

"Do I sound as ridiculous as you do when you get jealous of Cartman?" Kyle asks. Stan rolls his eyes, his cheeks heating.

"I don't get _jealous_ ," he says, though he does, and that's the worst part, because how the fuck did that happen. "I just hated that you ever paid attention to what he thought about anything. I wanted you to be able to ignore him like I did."

"He made it pretty hard for me to do that, dude."

"I know. God! See, now you're the one who's all level-headed about him and I'm the one who wants to kick his ass."

"Oh, I'd kick his ass if I could," Kyle says. "Fuck him, anyway. I hope he inherits all the shit I was working on and has a breakdown and ends up sobbing at the partners' feet. I'm starving, by the way, do you have food?"

"I think it's your brother's turn to cook for everyone tonight, actually," Stan says. "He makes pizza, like, every time. It's pretty decent."

"God, I forgot you guys do that communal dinner thing." Kyle rolls his eyes. "Can I have another beer?" he asks sweetly, pressing his face to Stan's jaw. 

"Help yourself. Man, I haven't seen you drunk in years. If ever there's a time to get wasted, it's the day you lose your job."

"My thoughts exactly." Kyle crawls toward the fridge again, and this time he's flaunting his ass rather intentionally, peeking back over his shoulder to make sure Stan has noticed. He has, his cock standing up again, tenting the quilt that's draped over his lap.

"Should I clean you up before dinner?" Stan asks. "You're all sticky." 

"Clean me up with what? You're not getting me near that sink."

"I could lick you clean," Stan says, rubbing his foot against Kyle's. 

"You're so dirty," Kyle says. He arches a little, smirking. He seems to have forgotten that he was getting another beer. 

"You're the one who's dirty," Stan says, moving toward him. He presses his thumbs into Kyle's ass cheeks and pulls them apart, licking his lips when Kyle moans. "Look how dirty you are, Kyle. You don't like being dirty, do you?"

"No," Kyle says, whining. He folds his arms on the mattress and rests his head on them, his ass still lifted. "Clean me up, please, before someone sees me like this."

Stan groans at the thought of anyone seeing this, not sure if he's aroused or enraged by the idea of someone putting their eyes on Kyle when he's freshly fucked, Stan's come still leaking from him. He sets to work, wondering if Rochelle is still down in her studio, kind of hoping that she'll hear the noises Kyle is making. She's always trying to set Stan up with hippie losers from the community, because she doesn't get it, no one does. Stan was just waiting, killing time. If some part of him didn't know that Kyle would come here for him, he would have gone back to South Park for Kyle, even if it meant losing his mind for good. He'd rather have Kyle. He'll pick Kyle over anything else, always.

They're late for dinner, but when they arrive everyone welcomes Kyle with open arms, literally. Stan knows he hates being hugged by strangers, and especially by strangers with dreadlocks and earthy body odor, but he's a good sport about it. When Kyle is finally passed to Ike he starts crying again, maybe because he's a little drunk at this point, and there aren't enough chairs so he sits in Stan's lap during dinner, accepting refills of wine from the communal bottle until he's more than just a little drunk. 

"This is going to be so good for your soul, man," Harper says to Kyle when he's sort of dozing with his head on Stan's shoulder, the empty wine glass still clutched in his hand. "It's going to, like, force you to find yourself."

"Yeah, at gun point," Kyle says. "It'll be super fun." 

"I should probably take him to bed," Stan says, because Kyle's hackles are going up and he does not approve of Harper on his best day.

"Yeah, get him some rest so we can put him to work tomorrow," Ike says. Kyle moans and flicks him off.

"He deserves a vacation," Stan says. "I can work extra hours for his share of food." 

"Oh, God, Stan, don't say that," Kyle says, his hand flopping against Stan's cheek, somewhere between a slap and a caress. "I have money. I'm not broke, not right away." 

"You should sell that car," Ike says.

"You sound like Mom!"

"You've told them what happened?" Ike looks surprised. Kyle groans and shakes his head. 

"Not like they'll care," he says. "I'm sure they're still glowing over your news." 

"Actually, Mom gave me a lecture about family planning," Ike says. "And Dad told me I need to go back to school. He's still got this idea that I'm going to be a surgeon." 

"Thank god you're not a surgeon," Kyle says. "Like I need to be upstaged any more than I already am." 

"Alright, bed time," Stan says.

He helps Kyle up and says his goodnights, Kyle's arm slung around his shoulders. Kyle is laughing under his breath at nothing and stumbling a little as they make their way down the moonlit path that leads from the main house to the back half of the property. Stan finds Kyle's drunkenness endearing, he always has, though he's also embarrassed, thinking of how many times Kyle and everyone else saw him like this.

"Ike is sure getting fat," Kyle says, and Stan laughs.

"I wouldn't say fat. Chubby, yeah, a little."

"It's the weed, I guess. The fucking _munchies_. He's always trying to tell me that I should be eating this, this hippie-style diet, and I'm like, Ike. You are fat. Don't say shit to me about food."

"Dude, you are so wasted," Stan says, hugging him closer when he sways. 

"Who cares? Good! You were right, dude, you were so right. Everything fucking sucks, you work so hard and for what? For what, Stan? To get laughed at by Cartman? Yeah, I don't think so. I'm just gonna live here and get stoned and like, babysit Ike's kids. Oh, God, that sounds terrible. I mean, kids are cute, but they smell? Ike smelled, as a baby. He totally smelled. Remember? Where are we going? Did we pass your barn?"

"We're going back to my room, and no, we didn't pass it. And it's not a barn. It's a former barn."

"Stan, I love you. Can I just say that? I love that you can live in a barn and you don't even care. I should be more like you. I will be! Okay? I'm gonna be like you from now on. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it." 

"Okay. For now, try putting one foot in front of the other. You're not really helping me here, Kyle."

"I'm not ready to go inside!" Kyle bellows. He throws an arm out and swivels wildly, gesturing at the trees that line the property. "We should sleep outside tonight. That's a Stan kind of thing to do."

"It's too cold. C'mon, dude, you need to get some rest." 

"I'm not even tired," Kyle says, though his eyes are half-closed and he spent the past hour at the dinner table yawning nonstop. "Isn't that weird? That I'm not tired?"

"It's totally weird. C'mon, we're almost there."

"Oh, Stan. Look at you, being all responsible. You're so great. I always knew you'd be okay. Well, no I didn't. I didn't care. I mean I cared, but I didn't, you know? I was down for whatever. Remember when we would have makeup sex? Is that what we had today? Stan, why don't you have a shower in your barn? What am I going to do? I can't use that shower that the other hippies use, it's too gross. Ike is the worst housekeeper. I can't believe he's having another baby. Would you have a baby with me?"

"Sure, dude," Stan says. "C'mon, we're here, up the stairs now."

"Stan?"

"What, Kyle?"

"Um," Kyle says. He steps backward, sways forward again, and throws up on Stan's shirt. On two of Stan's shirts, actually, because he's wearing one himself, since he didn't pack clothes or anything else before he got in his Lexus and drove here. 

"Oh, fuck," Kyle says, stumbling backward. Stan catches him, and picks him up bodily, which maybe he should have done in the first place. "Fuck," Kyle says, his voice shaking. "Why do I feel so shitty? What's the matter with me? Why do people hate me? Why did the partners hate me, Stan, what did I do wrong?"

He's full-fledged crying by the time Stan gets him upstairs, the overly long sleeves of Stan's shirt pressed over his face. Stan puts him out of the bed and helps him out of his clothes, undresses himself and returns to pull a clean thermal shirt onto Kyle, who is now just sniffling. He has Kyle rinse his mouth out, glad that he's drunk enough not to protest that the water in his glass came from Stan's sink. When he returns to the bed Kyle has already collapsed onto Stan's unwashed pillow, his eyes closed. He's moaning a little, clutching his stomach. Stan puts out the light and settles around him, holds him close and strokes his hair. 

"I'm so stupid," Kyle says. 

"No, you're not." 

"I am. And now everyone knows."

"Shh, don't be crazy. You know you're smart." 

"Stan, I puked on you."

"That's okay. I've done it to you lots of times." 

"I know," Kyle says, scooting closer, mumbling against Stan's chest. "I was congratulating myself. I always hoped I'd do it someday."

"Then you should be proud." Stan kisses the top of Kyle's head and listens to him moan some more before he finally goes soft with sleep. Kyle wheezes a little in his sleep after he's been drinking, something Stan has never told him, because Kyle would be embarrassed, and because Stan thinks it's cute. He stays up for a long time, smiling in the dark like a lunatic and running his fingers through Kyle's hair, softly enough not to wake him, though he's pretty sure Kyle could sleep through anything right now.

Eventually, something does wake Kyle up, but not for five hours. The sun isn't quite up yet, and when the noise begins outside Kyle moans, moans again, and finally lifts his head from the pillow, scowling at Stan when he scoots over to kiss Kyle's shoulder.

"What the hell is that noise?" Kyle asks, his voice so thick with exhaustion and misery that he sounds like he might actually be coming down with something, like he's achieved actual sickness just out of pure spite for the world.

"Those are the roosters," Stan says. 

"The what."

"Don't you remember? From the last time you were here? The roosters, Kyle."

"Well, what the fuck is their problem?" 

"They're roosters. That's kind of what they do."

"I have to pee," Kyle says, glowering at Stan like this is his fault. The roosters continue on outside, merrily off key.

"Sink's right over there," Stan says

"Hilarious."

"I could go down to the studio and get you a bucket?" Stan actually feels bad about this, because it's the kind of thing that bothers Kyle deeply. Kyle stares at him for a few beats and then sits up, hissing and pinching the bridge of his nose. Stan stays on his side, daring to brush his fingers lightly across the small of Kyle's back. Kyle's anger seems to fade and he just looks lost for a moment, staring into space. The roosters sound like they're drawing closer. Their usual morning rounds involve coming down toward Stan's place from the main house and then heading back up again, anticipating feed. 

"What am I going to do?" Kyle asks, and he sounds so sad that Stan gets scared. He sits up and puts his arm around Kyle's waist.

"You want to know what you're going to do?" Stan asks.

"Yeah."

"You're gonna mope around here for a little while, because you need to recuperate after what those assholes put you through, and you're gonna spend a lot of time in my bed and take walks with me and hang out with Ike. You're gonna drink as much of my beer as you want and learn the joys of peeing outdoors, and you're gonna read a lot and take naps and gain ten pounds, at least, because you look too skinny. Then you're going to start looking for jobs, here or anywhere, anywhere but in Colorado, and you're gonna get a great job at a firm where the hours are fair and your co-workers respect you, and wherever you go, I'm coming with you, alright? And I'm gonna take care of you, like I used to, and you're probably gonna take care of me sometimes, too. If that's okay. If you want."

Kyle turns to look at Stan, and he's trying to smile but his lips are shaking, so Stan braces himself for something devastating. 

"Just don't ever leave me again, okay?" he says, and the tremble in his lips moves down his spine. Stan can feel it along the length of his arm. 

"I won't, Kyle, God, I'm sorry, but if we had to be apart for awhile, it was worth it, 'cause now –"

"I don't mean when you moved here." Kyle turns away and wipes his cheek. "I mean when we were kids. When you left me, then."

"I won't," Stan says. He pulls Kyle to him and buries him against his chest, wanting to go back in time and do it then, when they both needed it but couldn't reach each other over the chasm that had split Stan away. "I won't, 'cause I think you can only leave someone like that once. And then you get strong enough to stay. I'm stronger now, I swear."

"I know," Kyle says, crying just a little, in the back of his throat. "I can feel it."

Fate has always lent an ample helping of humility to their moments of great profundity, and on this particular morning it's Stan taking Kyle downstairs and promising that he's both not looking and keeping guard for five minutes before Kyle is finally able to pee against the side of the barn. Stan keeps both promises, and it seems like a good start to their new life together, appropriately embarrassing, only they can't really be embarrassed in front of each other, not after everything that happened during the first thirty years.

"I'm gonna be thirty in two days," Stan says when they're back in bed together, Kyle still too tender from his hangover to fool around yet, his head resting on Stan's chest while light creeps into the room in increments of pale blue. 

"God, I guess that means I'll be thirty next year," Kyle says. "Horrible."

"No, it's not. Our thirties are going to be awesome, dude."

"But we're old, Stan!"

"I don't feel that old." 

Kyle moans. "I do. God, that job aged me. Should I just be a fucking farmer?"

"Nah. I think you'll be a great lawyer, when you find the right firm. And I don't want to be a farmer forever." 

"What do you want to be?" Kyle asks, tilting his face up toward Stan's. Stan grins, because they used to talk about this when they were kids, in bed together during sleepovers: _What do you want to be when you grow up?_ Stan wanted to play professional football; Kyle wanted to be the mayor of South Park.

"I think I just want to raise your children," Stan says. "Is that stupid?"

"Oh, God, did I start talking about that last night?" Kyle asks, sitting up quick. He looks mortified for a few seconds, then catches on, his hand sliding across Stan's chest. "Wait, what? Are you serious?"

"I don't know," Stan says. "I mean, yes, but. I don't want to freak you out."

Stan has never actually seen Kyle speechless before, but somehow he knew it would look like this. Stan leans up onto his elbows to kiss him, saving him from needing to respond. It's unfair to propose such a thing so early in the morning, in a room with no shower and no toilet, the roosters still going off in the distance. He just wants Kyle to know that it's on the table, and he can gauge Kyle's interest easily enough without words, in the way his exhausted body responds to Stan's. Kyle is almost never quiet during sex, not this quiet anyway, but he just gasps into Stan's mouth while Stan moves inside him, because he's afraid to speak. Stan knows what it means, is familiar with this particular brand of Kyle Broflovski anxiety. Kyle is afraid to show his hand because he thinks he's won the pot, and he's hanging back until it's a sure thing. Stan lets him use this strategy, like he always has, and stays inside him for a long time when they're through, until the roosters are otherwise occupied.

*

Things happen more or less the way Stan eventually knew they would. He was only ever accused of having psychic powers when he was on a mission to bring Kyle home to him, so maybe it's appropriate that actually doing so for good gave him the power to know the future. Kyle is at the farm for three months, and it's not easy for either of them, because as the weather grows colder Kyle weeps for bathroom-related privacy with alarming sincerity and Stan wants badly to give him a lot of things that he can't yet afford, but the farm provides them with some good moments, too. They chop down their own Christmas tree, and Kyle makes a Hanukkah dinner for the whole commune, pretending not to be proud about impressing the hippies who love his food. They talk about the kids they might someday have in whispers at night, when the barn is ice cold and they're huddled together under a mountain of blankets. 

If they can't sleep, they take walks across the farm in the dark, holding hands and leaving footprints in the snow drifts. Kyle says the quiet is eerie, but Stan knows he likes it, because he's the one who wakes Stan up and asks him if he wants to go out on even the coldest nights. Kyle likes it because it feels like the whole world belongs to them as they move through untouched snow, no sound but the distant twinkle of icicles growing on the trees out in the woods. It's the world they walked through as children, on the few nights when they were able to sneak out together. Stan likes it because it's making Kyle feel young again, day by day, his eyes lighting when he finds a tiny, perfectly formed pine cone resting on top of the snow and holds it up so that Stan can validate it for him: yes, this is a perfect thing. 

Kyle gets a job at a small construction malpractice defense firm in Boise, and they buy a house at the edge of a national forest, still surrounded by the smell of pine trees. Sometimes their little neighborhood reminds Stan of South Park, but nothing about that bothers him, and he keeps the friends he made at the farm, something that annoys Kyle until he realizes what hippies are good for: the women are very enthusiastic and generous surrogate mothers. 

For their oldest son's seventh birthday, Stan spends three weeks hunting down a radio controlled Tonka bulldozer, and it's the second time in his life that he's done so, no less important than the first. When he finally finds one through a message board posting, he drives all the way to Smithfield, Utah to pick it up, two days before Christmas, and he realizes on the drive home that he's not really getting it for Ben, though he'll love it, because remote controlled construction toys are timeless. He'll wrap it up and write Ben's name on the package, but he's getting it for Kyle, because Kyle is the one who will know what it means, and he'll laugh the way he did the first time Stan bought him one, which Stan shouldn't remember because he was so fucked up that day, but he does remember, he does: the last of the long Colorado winter finally taking its sluggish exit at the end of May, the wind whipping across the parking lot of Kyle's dorm while he drove the thing around and hoisted twigs with its shovel, and the way Kyle looked at Stan when he glanced up from the toy, asking Stan, like he had for the past ten years: _Are you okay yet? And what about now? Now?_ It was wordless, and so was Stan's response, just something that passed between their eyes, but Stan never lied to him, not that day or on any of the other days when it wasn't true, because he wanted it to be real and unbreakable when he could finally tell Kyle, _Yeah, I'm okay now, I really am_.


End file.
